Half Life's fanbase as well as its level of unfailing critical acclaim are some of the things game companies would have wished for. While the game already has a mark in the history of gaming, many are still anticipating the Half Life 3 release date.

With the original game of the franchise released in 1998, the game was also ported to the Playstation. The sequel Half Life 2 landed in 2004 after a protracted development phase, and was followed by a couple of add-on packs – Episode One and Episode Two.

More recently, Valve head-honcho Gabe Newell has confirmed in one of its mid-November 2012 interview that the firm is working on a new game engine. He said, "We've been working on new engine stuff for a while." Unfortunately, he didn't mention if it is Half-Life 3. However, it surely got everyone thinking about it.

At Gamescom in August 2012, it was discovered what looked like evidence of its presence – when Half Life 3 was included on a lists all the titles in a PDF from the games show's website that will be announced at the conference.

As 2014 arrived, the promise of a new Half Life release date seemed to be getting farther from possible. In January, Newell was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that Valve is deliberately focusing on multi-player games instead of a single player Half Life installment.

"When we started out we were a single-player video game company that could have been really successful just doing Half-Life sequel after Half-Life sequel," he said.

"But we collectively said let's try to make multi-player games even though there's never been a commercial successful multi-player game."

While these comments don't make good reading for Half Life fans, one takeaway is that if Valve does produce a second sequel, it would surely have a fearsome multiplayer mode built in. Some believe that Half Life 3 will be launched on Steam OS, which could put the game very much on the horizon.