Data strings in the latest Counter-Strike 2 update hint at two new Valve games, and one of them might just be Half-Life related

A Half-Life fan's favourite pastime (aside from actually playing Half-Life games) is latching onto the tiniest hope that a new Half-Life might be just around the corner. I say this as one such eternally optimistic Half-Life fan. Which is why I started vibrating with excitement at a single data string hidden in the latest Counter-Strike 2 update.

The string was uncovered by the Valve-oriented content creator «Gabe Follower». It was actually one of two chunks of code extracted from the update that hint at two different games, but we'll deal with the Half-Life one first as it’s the most specific and straightforward. In a tweet earlier this week, Gabe Follower posted an image of the code, which includes the line «type = hlx_2d_basic».

As Gabe Follower explains in the same tweet, the «hlx» part of that string is similar to the codename for Half-Life: Alyx – HLVR. But the X makes the codename considerably more vague. Could it be the codename for Half-Life 3? Possibly. Valve would certainly know that code which contained the phrase «hl3» would result in the Internet exploding, and might opt for a less loaded term.

A frankly more sensible suggestion in the replies is that the X might stand for «cross-platform», implying that hlx refers to a PSVR 2 version of Half-Life Alyx. Really though, it could be anything. Half-Life: Xen. Half-Life: Xtreme Karting, who knows?

Mention of another future Valve game in Half-Life universe (codename HLX, similar to HLVR a.k.a. Half-Life: Alyx) pic.twitter.com/GeS8QjOfmeFebruary 7, 2024

The other code snippet Gabe Follower posts is a little meatier, with around 30 lines of code all under the heading «Citadel». Codename: Citadel is a name Valve has used before. Again, the name is Half-Lifey in its implication, but previous reports have suggested that Citadel is a multiplayer game, and the rest of the code bears this out, with lines like «EGuidedBotMatchObjective» and «CitadelLobbyPlayerSlot_t».

Whatever it is, it sure involves a lot of