While Half-Life Alyx helped tide fans over somewhat, there is still a mountain of expectations and hopes that we'll get a direct sequel to Half-Life 2's story following Gordon Freeman's fight against the Combine empire. Although we've had numerous rumors and datamined details suggesting Half-Life 3's development, a recent slip-up is the biggest update for the franchise we've seen yet.

As shared by Eepoxi on Reddit, during a Valve panel at GameSoundCon, the developer Mike Morasky unintentionally mentioned that "HLX has its own version" of the HDR system used by Deadlock, to which his coworker seemingly whispered "nice work" in response to the slip-up that publicly confirmed the project's existence.

With HLX being used as an internal nickname for the long-rumored project that fans have associated with Half-Life 3 for years, the slip of the tongue has been sending fans into a frenzy over what it could mean for the franchise, especially given the reactions of Mike's coworkers who also said "good job, you only said it once" after the panel ended.

Half-Life 3 hasn't been cancelled, according to prominent Valve leakers, as development may have actually ramped back up.

Having been the first time the project has been officially acknowledged by a Valve employee publicly, it would also match up with the current leaks surrounding the development of Half-Life 3, which was supposedly going to be announced at last year's Game Awards before being pulled to refine the experience.

With countless assets having been revealed through Steam's server leaks , and the HLX codename even being mentioned in the code for numerous other Valve games like Deadlokc, the project's development has been a pretty terribly kept secret in recent years.

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