A massive cache of internal builds from Valve has reportedly leaked online, including beta builds of several classic Valve titles and possible weapons from Half-Life 2’s cancelled third episode.
The leak, which began circulating on Saturday and comes from an unknown source, includes 12 terabytes of data currently being sifted through by data miners. The files are dated from a ten-year period between 2003 and 2013, and include builds and assets of many Valve projects across that timespan.
Thus far, data from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Left 4 Dead, and Portal 2 have all been claimed to feature in the leak. This reportedly includes the complete Portal 2 beta from 2009, a much sought-after artifact for Portal 2 fans.
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The 2009 beta has a somewhat different story from the final game. It still takes place in the ruins of Aperture Science, but sees you guided through the initial test-chambers by pre-recordings of GLaDOS rather than Wheatley, and features other personality cores much more prominently. Curiously, a team of beta researchers and enthusiasts recently released a Portal 2 mod that attempts to recreate the beta build as accurately as possible, a project that took four years to realise.
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In addition, Valve-focussed YouTuber and enthusiast Gabe Follower reports that the files include the Weaponizer, an unfinished weapon that has been previously linked to Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Information about the Weaponizer appeared in a separate leak that occurred in 2011, inside a directory labelled “ep3”, while a gun that resembles the Weaponizer was shown in footage of Episode 3 that appeared in Valve’s 20th anniversary documentary on Half-Life 2 (via Gamerant).
Also apparently included are files (but apparently not a working build) of Valve’s cancelled puzzle game F-STOP, a precursor to Portal 2 that was in-development for around a year before Valve canned the project. Also known as ‘Aperture Camera’ F-STOP featured a mechanic similar to the one seen in 2023 puzzler Viewfinder, in which the player takes photographs of the environment which can then be applied as 3D objects in the game world.
While it’s not clear where the leak originated from, it has been linked to Valve’s Steam2 content-server infrastructure, which was replaced by SteamPipe in March 2013, which would explain why the latest files from the archive are from that year.
I have contacted Valve for comment on the leak and will update this story with any response.
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