Valve Fans Working Overtime To Fit Dota Card Game Into Half-Life Universe

Half-Life 3 has probably been unveiled at the Seattle arena where The International 2017 tournament for Dota 2 is being held, according to some of the internet’s foremost experts on the Half-Life series.

Fans of the series now believe that rather than being announced in the usual manner as a narrative first-person shooter, the much-anticipated new title is instead taking an “innovative new form” as a Dota-themed card game named Artifact.

“It’s absolutely Half-Life 3,” explained Valve fan Sam May as he combed through the teaser trailer for the new card game, frame-by-frame. “If you look right here and you squint really hard, one of these shadows is almost certainly a Vortigaunt.”

“Listen, I need this, okay? I need this,” May added, sobbing analytically. “Just let me have this.”

Fellow Valve enthusiast Emily Ferguson agrees, suggesting that the Artifact is “clearly one of those clever puzzles that Valve likes to do”.

“The ‘AR’ in Artifact clearly stands for ‘augmented reality’, and the ‘tifact’ bit is probably something else to do with Half-Life 3, which this is obviously an announcement for,” she concluded. “The word is three syllables long. Do I have to spell it out?”