“Half-Life” Lead Writer Has Left Valve

What does this mean for "Half-Life 3?"

By Andrew Dodson on January 8, 2016 at 2:20pm

It has been revealed that Marc Laidlaw, the sole/lead writer for Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and the Half-Life episodes, has retired from Valve after almost 20 years of employment. The news comes from Reddit user "TeddyWolf" who had emailed Laidlaw in this post. The original email "TeddyWolf" sent to Laidlaw had been to inquire about the status of the long-awaited "Half-Life 3," so it was quite a surprise when in the return email it was revealed that one of the lead writers of the Half-Life series was no longer involved.

Laidlaw does go into some detail about why he decided to leave Valve:

An outwardly obvious reason is that I'm old, or anyway oldish. My nickname when I first started at Valve in 1997 was 'old man Laidlaw'. The little baby level designer who gave me that that nickname is now older than I was then.

I had a good run but lately I have been feeling a need for a break from the collaborative chaos of game production, and a return to more self-directed writing projects.

Further along in the email, Laidlaw does speak briefly about the future of "Half-Life:"

"Where Valve may choose to take Half-Life in the future is not in my hands. I have been a grateful co-creator, but my time working on the series is behind me."

Its hard to know exactly what this means for "Half-Life 3." It could mean that it's done (at least the writing aspect). It could mean that the project is dead in the water. Or it could mean that there was never going to be a "Half-Life 3" to begin with and this has all been a crazy social experiment of some kind.

If you want to keep up with Marc Laidlaw, it might be a bit difficult to do so as he deleted his Twitter account in 2014 and it has been a while since he has updated his personal blog. However, he was recently published in an anthology of short stories entitled "Press Start To Play" which was released last year.