I don’t know if anyone here as seen it, but check out this link. This site is very new. I have no idea if it is real nor do I care because it makes me smile and right now, that is good enough. If it is a fake, it will be down soon enough.
Heartwarming, but its a picture nonetheless.
Not to mention its also a LINK to the Orange Box.
It was cute… kind of…
…not really.
If it’s legit, hooray. Brewskies all around.
If it’s not… well, I’ve waited this long.
Seems kinda legit to be a fake. Perhaps it’s valve’s way of saying, “It’s being worked on now, sorry about VGAs.”
Then again, that’s probably just wishful thinking.
Edit: Maybe the “Mark VII” stands for Gordon’s HEV suit…? Once again, playful, but unrealistic notions.
That could just be a placeholder for somthing that could be posted in the future and/or valve being like “And while your waiting go play these other great games by valve software!”
https://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/black-aperture.com
Hassen, David
ATTN BLACK-APERTURE.COM
care of Network Solutions
PO Box 459
Drums, PA. US 18222
Domain Name: BLACK-APERTURE.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Hassen, David
ATTN BLACK-APERTURE.COM
care of Network Solutions
PO Box 459
Drums, PA 18222
US
570-708-8780
Record expires on 19-Dec-2012.
Record created on 19-Dec-2011.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS65.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS66.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
The record is obviously set to private, which could mean anything. But:
Registrant:
Valve Corporation
ATTN HALF-LIFE2.COM
care of Network Solutions
PO Box 459
Drums, PA. US 18222
Domain Name: HALF-LIFE2.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Valve Corporation
ATTN HALF-LIFE2.COM
care of Network Solutions
PO Box 459
Drums, PA 18222
US
570-708-8780
Record expires on 27-Nov-2012.
Record created on 27-Nov-1999.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.VALVESOFTWARE.COM 208.64.202.34
NS2.VALVESOFTWARE.COM 208.64.203.134
NS3.VALVESOFTWARE.COM 68.142.64.168
Obviously is them… So who knows. Could be real, or fake.
Last time anyone asked Gabe, he said: “I don’t know.”
Actually, it links to half-life3.com which gets redirected to the Orange Box page. This is odd. I can’t imagine someone successfully squatted on that domain name.
You talking about he OP link?: https://orange.half-life2.com/
or this: https://orange.half-life3.com/
No, he’s talking about https://www.half-life3.com/
Me personally do not believe valve would create a website based purely in html.
I mean, look at this:
[code]
Status: Mark 7© 2011 Valve Corporation, all rights reserved. Valve, the
Valve logo, Half-Life, the Half-Life logo, the Lambda logo, Steam, the Steam
logo, Aperture Science, the Aperture Science logo, Source, the Source logo, Valve
Source
are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of
Valve Corporation.
[/code]
EDIT:https://www.half-life3.com/ is own by Valve atleast. The IP is 63.228.223.103. black-aperture.com can still be fake though.
[code] Registrant:
Valve Corporation
ATTN HALF-LIFE3.COM
care of Network Solutions
PO Box 459
Drums, PA 18222
US
Domain Name: HALF-LIFE3.COM
Administrative Contact :
Valve Corporation
xc4qy5mp3b6@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com
ATTN HALF-LIFE3.COM
care of Network Solutions
PO Box 459
Drums, PA 18222
US
Phone: 570-708-8780
Technical Contact :
Valve Corporation
xc4qy5mp3b6@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com
ATTN HALF-LIFE3.COM
care of Network Solutions
PO Box 459
Drums, PA 18222
US
Phone: 570-708-8780
Record expires on 28-Jun-2012
Record created on 28-Jun-1999
Database last updated on 20-Aug-2010 [/code]Searching around the web didn’t reveal any other pertinent info. Unless someone can think of something clever to do with this site or the info we have, I’m guessing we’ll probably just have to wait and see what comes out of this. Since it looks pretty legit, I will remain cautiously optimistic, but I’m expecting it’s just a fan-made site. The registration info and the fact that the logo also differs from the one seen on that “employee’s” t-shirt makes me wary, though I suppose THIS could be Valve-made and the t-shirt fan-made.
Although if it is legit, notice the Aperture logo inside the HL3 logo…interesting implications there. Well, here’s hoping all the little hints and such we’ve been seeing lately are going somewhere.
This is interesting, won’t keep my hopes up though… I can only take so much heartbreak 
Well it looks promising. If it’s fake, then at least someone did a thorough job.
It’s fake. The crappy HTML gives it away:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">The doctype is for HTML 3.2, this is an obsolete version of HTML from 1997. There is no chance in hell a professional would use HTML 3.2 nowadays. All Valve’s other sites are HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0.
<font color="#ffffff" size="1" face="Arial">Similarly, no way anybody who knew what they were doing would use tags in 2011, especially specifying a Windows font like Arial.
There’s other stuff in there too, like the lack of a closing tag, the use of multiple non-breaking spaces, inappropriate use image-map attributes, etc. It all points to this being done by someone who didn’t know anything about making websites, either copying and pasting an antiquated bit of HTML, or using a poor WYSIWYG editor with shoddy HTML output, like an old version of Word or something.
Plus there’s the corny domain name itself: ‘black-aperture.com’? Seriously?
u got a problem with black nigga?
Yeah it’s fake.
‘It’s fake. The crappy HTML gives it away…’
You guys keep referring to an Aperture logo…I see none.
Plus, “The crappy HTML gives it away”…ummm, they could have just said something like, “Hey, [Web designer name], can you throw together a simple HTML page with the HL3 logo on it? We’re sick of fans screaming for it, so we need to show them that it’s being worked on, at least.”
…Which might explain the bad HTML.
no. Just no.
Well EXCUSE ME for trying to be optimistic here.
Fake site is fake.
I’ll only believe in HL3 when the Fat Man himself says so.
If you turn up the brightness you can see the aperture logo. It looks pretty cool, actually.