Valve Time
This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous.
Such material may not necessarily be meant to be taken seriously.
Such material may not necessarily be meant to be taken seriously.
Valve time is an industry term used jokingly with game/software/update releases from Valve, used to acknowledge the difference between the "promised" date for released content stated by Valve and the "actual" release date.
Contents
Valve Time
Valve Time Actual Time Item October 1997 September 1, 1998 Release of Half-Life demo November 1997, April 1998, Summer 1998 November 19, 1998 Release of Half-Life "Soon" (1998), way before 2005 October 10, 2007 Release of Team Fortress 2 September 30, 2003, Holidays 2003, April 2004 November 16, 2004 Release of Half-Life 2 "First half of the summer" 2005 October 27th, 2005 Release of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast September 2005, February/March 2006, April 24th 2006 June 1st, 2006 Release of Half-Life 2: Episode One Christmas 2006, Q1 2007, Summer 2007 October 10, 2007 Release of Half-Life 2: Episode Two Christmas of 2007 August 25th, 2017 (as script) (Archived link, Epistle 3 removed in 2022)
Officially confirmed cancelled on November 16, 2024 (20th anniversary of Half-Life 2)Release of Half-Life 2: Episode Three Four days Two months and six days Availability of the Earbuds in TF2 Every 3 months Every few years Release of each Half-Life 2 Episodes In the coming weeks In large updates starting in five months and continuing over the next seven years TF2 Class Achievements Coming tomorrow at 11 AM Coming tomorrow at 2 PM Team Fortress 2 Update Today Tonight at 11:49 PM, Pacific time Time TF2 beta went live Q1 The third week of Q2 Coming "Soon" Coming in over two months Team Fortress 2, Engineer Update. Beginning in (next month)... Beginning in the month after the stated one Shortly In six months Left 4 Dead SDK We're finishing this feature up now We've just finished the concept and we'll start working on it in the coming weeks (see below) Steam Friends "within the month" (Feb 1st)
April 29th TF2 Gold Rush Update January or maybe even March May 23 Day of Defeat Source Steamworks beta Until the problem is fixed with an SDK update For the engine after the engine after this (where everything but our tools have changed) Early 2008: November 18, 2008 Release of Left 4 Dead Monday Monday-ish Arena Mode announcement date on http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/ before going live late Monday night PST When we started working on TF2 22 years ago (putting the date 11 years before the initial release of Team Fortress) October 27, 1 PM, PST (8 PM, UTC)
October 27, 11 PM PST (October 28, 6 AM, UTC)
October 28, 1 PM, PST (8 PM, UTC)
October 28, 2 PM, PST (9 PM, UTC)
October 28, 3 PM, PST (10 PM, UTC)October 28, 5:08 PM, PST (October 29, 0:08 AM, UTC) Left 4 Dead 2 early access demo ...any minute now 5 days later Nov 9, 2009 Left 4 Dead update Late March Late April Release of The Passing for L4D2 In April May 12th Steam for Mac This coming holiday season! 2010
April 18th, 2011. Portal 2 release date July 12th July 15th TF2 Polycount Pack Contest winner selection Later this Spring Fall Release of L4D on Mac In one hour In two hours and 15 minutes The release of Alien Swarm "Working with Developers" 8 years, 6 months 25 days Downloadable drivers via Steam By the end of August or early September September 30th Release of Polycount update "about a month" after the "March" release date of The Passing October 5, 2010 Release of "The Sacrifice" "Next update" (January 2011) Too many updates to count since then. Team Fortress 2 Jigglebone fix Next week 1 week and 3 days Fix for the matchmaking menu on Team Fortress 2 not fully darkening the background 20 minutes 40 minutes The International Dota 2 Tournament Summer
October 4th Portal 2 DLC Early August September 14th Rubles in Steam Store Limited Time Only Still going strong (2010 - Present) Mann Co. Store promotion item Early October November 30th 2011 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive closed beta testing 24 hours 28 Hours and 45 Minutes Dota 2 server maintenance Today's update An update 4 years, 8 months, 18 days later Orange Box listdeaths removal No later than June 30th. July 12th. 2012 International Ticket Information (Dota 2 Championships) 30 Minutes 1-2 Hours Playing a Mann vs Machine game An update tomorrow or early next week 22/08/2012 (3 months later) Fix a critical security bug in the L4D2/ASW/P2/CS:GO engines. September 5th 2012 [1] [2] October 3rd 2012 Expanding Steam to non-game software Hopefully Next Week 9 Months Later iOS Steam Update Before the end of 2012
Fairly quickly (8/17/2012)
February 15th 2013 Steam for Linux April 23rd 2013 May 1st 2013 GCF to VPK conversion for Team Fortress 2 "Later this year" (2012)
Middle of next month (October 2012)
May 2013 Left 4 Dead Linux builds "Shortly after release" of OS X support (2010) June 26th 2013 Mac OS X support for Source SDK Code "We’re going to release new SDK’s within the next week or two." (April 17th 2013) June 27th 2013 Source SDK 2013 Later this year (2011). Then delayed to Q1 of 2012. July 9th 2013 Dota 2 August 24th 2013 August 27th 2013 Team Fortress's Birthday October 27th 2013/Middle of September December 4th Part two of the "bi monthly" comics By the end of August (2014) 4th September, 2014 Goblin Techies for Dota2 "Early next year" (September 2014) June 18, 2015 Source 2 Dota 2 Beta July 31 at 8 am
July 31 at 12 pmJuly 31 at 12:45 Pre-order pickup at TI5 "In the next few weeks" (August 13, 2015) exactly 18 weeks TF2 performance update "Update Notes Coming Soon" (July 7, 2016) About 5 hours later. TF2 Meet Your Match patch notes. Some weekend in June Week 45 (July 15, 2016) Dota 2 Battle cup 4:00 PM PDT 2 Hours later Dota 2 True Sight Episode 1 "a little quicker" than 11 months 1 year, 4 months, 10 days TF Comics #6 "next year" (October 12, 2016) First announcement November 18, 2019 Big product announcements for Valve VR content Later this month (May 2017) May 39th, 2017 (June 8th, 2017) Dota 2 Siltbreaker Campaign Act I "Next week, as always" (October 11, 2016) October 21st 2016 Scream Fortress 2016 "This fall" 12/12/2016 Dota 7.00 "The New Journey" "to be shipped in a future update" (August 15, 2016) October 16th 2017 TF2 Jungle Inferno Update "Priority for 2017" June 19th 2018 CSGO Panorama UI "... before the end of the month" (July 2018) July 33rd CSGO Panorama UI enabled for everyone by default "Later today" The next day. CSGO Free Availability "...and you're all in the beta starting in October" (August 20th, 2018) November 19th, 2018 Start of Artifact Closed Beta "What are you doing Wednesday?" (December 5th, 2018) "Thursday?" (December 6th, 2018) Major CS:GO Update "Later this year" (2019) [3][4][5] "ships March 2020" "Flagship VR game" release (Half-Life: Alyx) "Early next week" Wednesday the next week 
Dota Underlords Gameplay Update (#210)
"After the weekend" Friday of the following week Statement on TF2's unusual drop rate bug The Game Awards, 12 December 2019 Canceled Half-Life: Alyx information Steam page and website claimed it would ship with the game on March 23rd, 2020. May 15th, 2020 Half Life Alyx: Hammer Editor & Workshop Soon Canceled after 10 years Portal 2 Trading December 2021 February 25th 2022 Steam Deck Release Date "Late Spring" October 6th, 2022 Steam Deck Dock Release Date November 2022 December 8th, 2022 Portal with RTX Release Date "Summer 2017"
"Summer 2023"
"What are you doing next Wednesday?" (September 27th, 2023)September 27th, 2023, 23:40 Counter-Strike 2 Release Date Looking Ahead to 2020 September 25, 2023 Release of SteamVR 2.0 (beta) Late June 2024, later delayed to "June 39th" July 9, 2024 (dated "June 39, 2024") Release of Crownfall Act III "Full SDK update will come later" (November 17, 2023) August 20, 2024 SDK update for Half-Life's 25th Anniversary January 1, 2024 November 5, 2024 End of support for Steam on Windows 7 to 8.1, as well as 
macOS 10.13 and 10.14.
Reverse Valve Time
Note that these outliers may be the results of an undiscovered "Greenlight Savings Time".
Valve Time Actual Time Item At 4PM pdt At 1:30 pdt (L4D2 50% off sale) This week The next day May 19, 2010 Team Fortress 2 update In a few days Within 24 hours December 11, 2008 TF2 update We're wrapping things up... 2 Weeks Pyro update "before the end of the summer" August 20th New Left 4 Dead DLC Announcement "in time to celebrate Halloween" October 27 Left 4 Dead on OSX On 11/8/2010 11/7/2010 11PM (GMT -8) (TF2 Halloween Event ends) April 20th, 2011. 7AM PDT If and when enough Potato Sack games are played. Portal 2 release date "July 22nd at the latest" July 21st Dead Air Beta in Left 4 Dead 2 "Wednesday" (October 5) October 4 Portal 2 DLC release "When the community says it's ready" August 21, 2012 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Release 50 days after September 11th (October 31st) October 26 TF2 Halloween The three days around Full Moon in December 2013 (December 16th-18th) December 13th-15th Team Fortress 2 monthly Full Moon event April 2, 2015 October 2, 2014 4th issue of Team Fortress Comics: Blood in the Water In the coming weeks 5 days later Linux and OS X clients for Dota 2 Reborn Beta Monday, August 31, 2015
(link to Tweets)Monday, August 31, 2015 TF Comics #5 A day or two 9 hours Dota 6.87 November 1, 2017 October 31, 2017 Dota 2 Dueling Fates Update We will work on getting it fixed 26 hours and 26 minutes CSGO sound bug fix November 19, 2018 November 18, 2018 Artifact Key-holder Beta goes live May 1st, 2019 April 30th, 2019 Full announcement of Valve Index headset March 23, 2020 @ 10am PT March 23, 2020 @ 9:56am PT Half-Life: Alyx Release
