Valve’s big announcement isn’t Half-Life 3, but a free Source 2 engine

Well, the eagerly awaited news from Valve wasn't quite Half-Life 3, but yesterday's announcement at Game Developers Conference 2015 of Source 2, a more powerful game engine for developers, could be the spark needed.

The Source 2 engine is the successor of Valve's original Source engine, which debuted in June 2004 with the launch of Counter-Strike: Source, and has been used to run many of Valve's classics including the Left 4 Dead Series and, yes, Half-Life 2. Clearly this means we're getting a Half-Life 3, right?

"The value of a platform like the PC is how much it increases the productivity of those who use the platform," said Valve's Jay Stelly. "With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favorite games."

Like Epic's Unreal engine and the Unity engine, Valve says Source 2 will be "available for free to content developers."

Valve also announced a special version fo Source 2 that will be compatible with Vulkan, "cross-platform, cross-vendor 3D graphics API that allows games developers to get the most out of the latest graphics hardware."

"This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity will help continue the PC's dominance as the premiere content authoring platform," Stelly added.