Half-Life 3 Skips The Game Awards 2025 As Insider Hints At A Bigger Play From Valve

We all went into The Game Awards half-convinced Valve was finally going to pull the Half-Life 3 lever. The show ended. Nothing. Again. But right after, an insider dump made the whole non-event make a lot more sense — and maybe even a little encouraging, if you squint.

So why wasn’t Half-Life 3 at The Game Awards?

On a post-TGA episode of the Insider Gaming Weekly podcast, Mike Straw addressed the no-show. According to him, Geoff Keighley’s pre-show teasing had nothing to do with Half-Life 3 to begin with. The hype spiral was mostly fans connecting dots that weren’t there. If you saw social feeds yelling 'WHERE IS HALF-LIFE 3' on December 12, you weren’t alone, but that wasn’t on Keighley.

Straightening out another point: Straw had heard potential announcement windows, but every one of those dates has now come and gone — which is exactly why he never ran them as hard info. Here’s the twisty part: different journalists and creators apparently got different dates on purpose, a classic test to see who leaks. Valve has reportedly played that game before. The end result: noise, confusion, and zero announcement.

Fellow insider Tom Henderson chimed in with the practical view: leaks exist because studios aren’t ready to commit. In his read, Half-Life 3 skipping December wasn’t a delay or a death knell — it was Valve not being ready to plant a flag yet.

'The game’s real. It’s just a when, not if.'

The bigger picture: Valve’s hardware plan is the holdup

The more interesting part of Straw’s comments wasn’t the game — it was the strategy around it. Per his sources, Half-Life 3 is still meant to land alongside a new wave of Steam hardware: a refreshed Steam Machine, a new Steam Controller, and something called the Steam Frame. The target for that whole lineup, at least initially, was spring 2026.

The snag isn’t development. It’s pricing. Since October, PC component costs have spiked, with memory and storage leading the pain. Straw says RAM prices have jumped so much that, in some cases, memory now costs more than a graphics card. If you’re trying to ship consumer hardware, that’s a nightmare for setting a price anyone will accept.

Add in another wrinkle: early chatter around pricing apparently sparked backlash, and with costs still climbing, Valve has every reason to avoid locking in numbers and getting roasted for it. If they announce the hardware now and then the bill of materials gets even worse, they’re stuck.

What this likely means

• Half-Life 3 exists, and insiders keep hearing the same thing: it’s happening.
• The reveal is tied to Valve’s next hardware push: Steam Machine, Steam Controller, Steam Frame.
• The original internal target was spring 2026 for a coordinated launch.
• The roadblock is hardware pricing, especially RAM and storage, which surged after October.
• Valve may be testing for leaks and keeping timelines fluid until it can price the hardware without getting hammered.

So yeah, The Game Awards on December 12 came and went with zero crowbar. Annoying? Sure. But if Straw and Henderson are on the money, this isn’t a cancellation story — it’s a timing and economics story. Once Valve can make the hardware math work, the game reveal should follow. Until then, prepare for more cryptic quiet and the occasional fake-out date floating through the grapevine.