Holy headcrabs! Did Valve just soft-launch the Source 2 engine?

Gordon
We don't want to jinx it, but...

Valve has just pushed out new Workshop Tools for Dota 2, but while that in itself might not thrill you, this could be a trojan horse for something much, much bigger.

A bunch of modders have been sifting through the new tools and have discovered that the code is significantly different - so much so they believe this is a soft-launch for Valve's anticipated Source 2 engine.

Hype hype hype

All .dll files have now been renamed with an added "2" (engine2.dll, vphysics2.dll) and one Redditor pointed out a reference to "Source 2" in the program file path itself.

A rumour from earlier this year claimed that Valve would launch Source Engine 2 alongside its Steam Machines, some of which were meant to be available by now.

With the Machines getting pushed back to 2015, it's possible that Valve is ploughing ahead with Source 2 regardless. However there's been no confirmation from above, so we can't fully verift that this is definitely the new engine.

It's expected that Valve is preparing Left 4 Dead 3 to launch with Source 2 when it arrives in its full-fat form, and needless to say, this latest news will get the Half-Life 3 speculation firing up again. All aboard the hype train.

Via CVG

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Hugh Langley

Hugh Langley is the ex-News Editor of TechRadar. He had written for many magazines and websites including Business Insider, The Telegraph, IGN, Gizmodo, Entrepreneur Magazine, WIRED (UK), TrustedReviews, Business Insider Australia, Business Insider India, Business Insider Singapore, Wareable, The Ambient and more.


Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider covering Google and Alphabet, and has the unfortunate distinction of accidentally linking the TechRadar homepage to a rival publication.