Twitter has been abuzz with news that of Valve confirming Half-Life 3 on its supposed website in the past hour or so. Unfortunately, we have to be the bearer of bad news – like all the other times beforehand, it is fake.
The website in question – valve.software – is not the official Valve website (it would be valvesoftware.com). It is a fake website that someone has created as a hoax, ripping off the existing Valve website and adding an image of Half-Life 3. What gave it away as a fake was that the website is hosted on Namecheap, according to the WHOIS record.
Interestingly enough, valve.software is the number one entry when you search “Valve Software” on Google.
Who created the hoax?
I thought finding the person who created the hoax would be very hard – the domain’s WHOIS record was protected using some service in Panama.
However, turns out, it was really easy. The person was tracking how many visits he was getting using his own Google Analytics code. We managed to find another website owned by the hoaxer by typing the organisation ID into Google.
TechGeek can reveal that the hoax was created by a person who goes by the name “Scratch” who is from Australia. We also have found his Steam profile that confirms he was the creator of the hoax.
EDIT: We have since removed some information about Scratch that was previously published. We have since been alerted that it is outdated.