Despite it closing in on a decade since the release of the last official game in the Half Life universe, many fans around the world still consider it one of the best series ever made and would love to see its story concluded. To that end, they continue to rib Valve for not making it and have done the same with the new Steam Awards system.
It's designed to let players and curators alike give specific games awards to show people who haven't played it something it does particularly well. In the case of Half Life 2: Episode 2, gamers have awarded it with the title of Game That Deserves a Sequel.
This is only possible because in the Steam Awards list that players have been contributing too, the last slot is left blank for them to plug their own ideas and entries in. Similar awards have been "best explosions," or "most likely to say "that'll do'" when something goes wrong.
The Game That Deserves A Sequel has proved rather popular though and could lead to Half Life 2: Episode 2 winning, even though there are many PC gamers now who never even heard of the HL2 franchise, let alone played its base game or the original '90s classic.
It seems unlikely to have much of an effect on Valve, which seems to have largely moved beyond big game releases, especially in the FPS genre. However never say never. Valve does exactly what it wants and if it finally decides to make HL3, it will generate a lot of buzz - it will have a lot of hype to live up to though.