Many ambitious projects die in the early stages of development. As it turned out, Valve has accumulated a dozen of these games - among them is not such a mythical Half-Life 3, Left 4 Dead 3 and a few more titles from familiar franchises. Information about them was published in the interactive media book of the famous journalist Jeff Cayley The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx.
Expected by millions, Half-Life 3 was indeed in development. Valve came up with a system of procedurally generated segments with special tasks between plot episodes and even scanned the appearance of Frank Sheldon, that is, G-Man. The studio was engaged in the project from 2013 to 2014, but dropped it due to the fact that Source 2 at that time was not yet ready.
For the same reason, at the time, Valve refused Left 4 Dead 3. The action of the cooperative zombie shooter was planned to be transferred to Morocco. In it, users could explore the open world, simultaneously fighting off hundreds of zombies. The studio also planned to release another title in this franchise - only the working name Hot Dog is known from the details.
Among other things, Valve has been involved in several VR games in the Half-Life universe. One of them was supposed to be a shooter with short demonstration shootings. The project was planned to be part of The Lab, but did not have time. The second title for virtual reality devices was called Borealis. He was engaged in by scriptwriter Mark Laidlaw - the story was built on time travel between the period of the seven-hour war and the events after the final of Episode 2.
Valve was preparing two more VR games: SimTrek from the developers of the Kerbal Space Program and unpretentious Minecraft-style fun called A.R.T.I. In theory, all of this could be played in a helmet called Vader. However, the project was too ambitious - each device would have to be sold at a price of at least $ 5000, so the development was closed.
The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx also talked about Valve's attempt to create his own RPG, inspired by The Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls and Monster Hunter. They wanted to release it in small parts, but the project did not go beyond the concept. After the cancellation of this game, the studio thought about developing a single title about the hero Dota 2 named Ax, but did not grow together.
Valve's last game was Half-Life: Alyx, released in March 2020. Right now the studio is working on a secret project, and also plans to engage in the development of the Half-Life franchise. Alas, no details have been revealed yet.