The all-important question of “can Valve finally count to ‘3’?” somehow is tied to the RAM price shock that the tech industry is experiencing today: turns out, Half-Life 3 is supposed to be a launch title for the upcoming Steam Machine, but Valve isn’t willing to put a price on the GabeCube yet because of the ridiculous situation that memory makers and AI companies collectively have put the rest of us in, which meant the game has to wait.
RAM Pricing Spoiled Valve’s Half-Life 3 Launch?
Genuine rumors of Half-Life 3 have been flying around for a while by this point (aside from being a decade-long meme by this point), but it ended up being a no-show on the recent The Game Awards despite rumors suggesting that the game will finally be announced after 21 years since the last mainline title was released. Journalist Mike Straw (via Wccftech) said in Insider Gaming Weekly podcast that Valve wanted a new Half-Life title to promote its new hardware, but the company couldn’t decide on what the hardware should cost at retail owing to the extremely volatile nature of RAM pricing today.
Before you worry about the legitimacy of Half-Life 3, Mike Straw confirms that the game is indeed real. He said: “At the end of the day, the game is real. There’s no denying it. It’s just a when and not if at this point. All the signs pointed to it being announced in December (2025). Then everything hit the fan, and I think it was a case of that concern. The Steam Machine was supposed to be Q1, like the end of Q1 2026, but I’m starting to wonder if that hardware’s going to be pushed out.” For now at least, Spring 2026 is the most likely target, but the nature of RAM prices may further affect that decision.
It should be said that while Steam Machine looks like a console and behaves almost like a console, it’s ultimately a PC within – and the company won’t subsidize it like console makers Microsoft and Sony do for their counterparts. Considering that you can do whatever you want with Steam Machine and Valve has no control over things like post-sales revenue for this specific device, it’s only fair for them to set a sustainable one-and-done price tag to make business sense. As such, RAM pricing will have a very profound effect on how much Valve can price it without getting too high for consumers, or too low for itself.
Pokdepinion: What a weird timeline we’re living in.
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