Half-Life 3 Announcement Leads To Angry Reviews Of DOTA 2, Third-Party Developers Offer Hope

The prospect of Valve developing and releasing Half-Life 3 has been an internet meme for years, but with the recent announcing by the company that is never coming, pent up rage spewed forth. Now, gamers are bombing DOTA 2’s Steam page with lots of negative reviews, bringing down its Very Positive label to Mixed. There is hope, however, as other developers are looking to creating their own version of HL3.

Although it was pretty much expected that HL3 was never going to come out, the reality of this fact still hit a lot of fans hard. As for why they are targeting DOTA 2, it would seem that many of them blame the MOBA game for the FPS title’s demise, Ars Technica reports.

In addition, one of the writers who worked on the franchise Mark Laidlaw recently released what essentially amounts to fan fiction of what HL3 would have been. Titled Epistle 3, it details the potential plotline that he had in mind for the game. Instead of making gamers happy, though, it only served to spur their anger.

Ironically, however, it would seem that many of the gamers who are review-bombing DOTA 2 are players who have logged dozens or even hundreds of hours into the MOBA title. As of writing, the game’s reception has fallen to 71 percent from the previous 89 percent positive, so the trolling is definitely having an effect.

On the other hand, there may be some good news coming from an unexpected source. Something called an “Epistle 3 Jam” was launched by developer Laura Michet, Kotaku reports. Apparently, the goal is to create a game or games using parts or all of the script that Laidlaw released. If enough developers get on board, fans could be looking at multiple variations of what should have been HL3.