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Anyone Else been following the countdown at blackmesa.com? (blackmesa.com)

submitted 1 month ago by foggy@lemmy.world to c/pcgaming@lemmy.world

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The bottom of the page there is a countdown that will expire at midnight Eastern standard Time tonight.

This company claims to be in Boston. They've received federal grants. I've done a small amount of digging, but it would be entirely within valves resources to set up such a company. They have a LinkedIn, but it doesn't really seem like anyone really works there? It seems like a viral marketing campaign.

There was a Reddit thread. A while back. Some people noticed classes in the HTML that referenced other half-lifey things. But, some people in that thread shut it down as nothing out of the ordinary.

Then, there have been recent leaks with regard to a new game being developed. Someone found a resume suggesting that a person had done voice-over work for an unreleased project with Valve in 2023.

There was also a leak of some files with .hlx file types, and I guess prior to the half-life alyx release some .hla files leaked.

In the .hlx file leak, I guess there was found references to things like the EV suit.

Here's a YouTube video that touches on all of this.

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[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's a big reach. It's spending a lot of money for not much gain, when they could spend that money either on regular advertising or on a real ARG campaign.

If it was an ARG for HL3, why would it be based on Black Mesa? That's the HL1 remake fan project that's already done.

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What money is it spending exactly? A lease for a small building and a small town in Massachusetts? Maybe 10 grand a month? A salary for, as far as LinkedIn tells us, 2:00 to 10 individuals, we'll call it a million dollars.

Are you telling me that Valve isn't willing to invest 2 million dollars in advertising the most anticipated video game of all time?

What do you think valves marketing budget is?

Do you think there's a modulation when it comes to expenditures for half-life 3 should they arise?

When was the last time you saw an ad for a valve game outside of the steam ecosystem?

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Bedford isn't a small town. There's a bunch of other biotech facilities in that area. It looks like it'd be a relatively cheap building to lease, but not as cheap as you're thinking.

I think if they were going to spend $2m on marketing, they'd actually use it for marketing, not spinning off a biotech company.

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago

Oh right. All those ads you saw for all those games they put out. Yeah. No, good point, valve definitely has a tradition of spending their marketing dollar just like every other company out there. If half-life 3's coming out, we'll probably hear about it in the Sears catalog. 🙄 What was I thinking.