Maybe someday, we will be able to look back on these developments and laugh as we begin our umpteenth playthrough of Half-Life 3. Until that point, the safest approach is to take every bit of reports concerning Valve’s seminal game with the most important grain of salt you may get your hands on, notwithstanding the scoop comes from directly from Valve (see the HL3 t-shirt hubbub for further details). With that during mind, the inside track of the Half-Life 3 European trademark registration leading to a hoax should include absolutely no surprise.

Sure, the hassle is valiant, and it undoubtedly worked on the subject of generating renewed hype for those four words the gaming community longs to listen to-”Half-Life 3 confirmed”-but it surely was concerned with naught. PCGamesN.com has the main points:

We reported that the Half-Life 3 trademark registered every week ago was the work of Valve, but that now seems highly unlikely. The mark has now lost its page at the EU site – and are available to consider it, was made in suspicious proximity to the same mark for Portal 3.

A quick search of the trademark database within the link confirms the “Unsuccessful search: Found 0 trade marks” of status of Half-Life 3, no less than in Europe. This moves players back right into a square one status. Almost, anyway. While the trademark hoax is a specific thing, there’s been no denial/retraction in regards to the story that appeared in RockPaperShotgun.com, perhaps the smartest PC gaming blog on the net. As a refresher, their post indicated the next:

There is something called Jira that Valve uses for project management. Everything they do is tracked on it, and last night it accidentally went public-at the NeoGaf forum-and OHMYGOD THERE’S A HALF-LIFE 3 TEAM ON IT! No Ricochet 2 team, however.

Perhaps that may be the ray of hope for folk to lean on. Until the time Half-Life 3 is truly confirmed and/or released, right here Twitter account is perhaps your best resource for Half-Life 3′s release status:

No.

— Is HL3 Out Yet? (@IsHL3OutYet) October 6, 2013

[Lead image courtesy of Valve]