Mysterious “Black Mesa” website says it’s “not secretly working on Half Life 3”

Enlarge / Kind of a weird image to post if you're trying to convince people you're not involved in a Half-Life ARG...

Here at Ars, we're always on the lookout for hints and actions that suggest the long, long wait for Half-Life 3 may eventually come to an end. So when users across the Internet started making note of the mysterious and intriguingly named BlackMesa.com recently, our ears perked up for signs of a new promotional alternate reality game (ARG).

Alas, this seems like yet another false alarm. BlackMesa.com is simply the website for Black Mesa, which confirmed in a public statement that it is "actually a real company in the Boston area... working hard to assure and secure vaccine and other biological manufacturing production."

HALF LIFE 3 MIGHT BE GETTING ANNOUNCED ON SEPTEMBER 30THhttps://t.co/hSytiq2GoR Just went live and it has a countdown at the bottom of the page, that ends on September 30th. When it finishes it will display a white text saying "That's it." pic.twitter.com/MK3QveRc6R

— PеQu (@ImPeQu) August 9, 2024

The BlackMesa.com domain name dates back to at least 2006, when the address was filled with search engine optimization ads by an outfit called MDNH, Inc. But in 2022, a page advertising the domain's availability for purchase was suddenly replaced by a mysterious logo that bears a striking resemblance to the fictional Black Mesa logo in the games. And then there's the hard-to-read cipher at the bottom, the kind of thing that an ARG might use to hide important information in plain sight.