Valve's long-time collaborator and composer Mike Morasky mentioned HLX directly in public for the first time. During a Q&A session at GameSoundCon 2026, he stated that Deadlock and HLX each have their own HDR implementations, but he did not explain what HLX is, nor did he confirm any connection to the Half-Life series.
This statement is considered the first time a Valve employee has publicly used the name HLX, indicating that HLX is not entirely a community-coined term, but rather a project name actually used internally at Valve. What can be confirmed at this stage is that Valve is involved in the project and has implemented its own dedicated HDR solution for it.
Over the past few years, references to HLX have appeared multiple times in Source 2 code mining results related to updates for Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2. This led the community to speculate that it might be a new Half-Life project, even linking it to the long-awaited Half-Life 3.
However, Morasky did not reveal any details about HLX's gameplay, platform, announcement date, or release window. Discussions regarding the ending of Half-Life: Alyx and the timing of Valve's announcements cannot be considered official confirmation, so identifying HLX directly as Half-Life 3 remains speculative.