This is one of those stories that we actually hate to report about because, well, we feel kind of forced to at this stage. When Valve announced that their Portal 2 event at E3 2010 was canceled to be replaced by a "surprise" a lot of folks, including us, speculated that the "surprise" might actually be a reveal of the long, long in development Half-Life 2 Episode 3.

While we still think such a reveal might actually be in the works (hey anything is possible) some images have popped up on the interwebs that show the classic lambda symbol with the words "Freeman June 14". The image comes from the Twitter page of the founder of GamerTag Radio but Rock Paper Shotgun (without actually naming its source) has already declared the image to be a fake. However we think that while this could very well be a Photoshop dealie, it's still possible that Half-Life 2 Episode 3 (or maybe even Half-Life 3) could be the surprise and someone outside of Valve is just trying to stir the pot. If that's the case, well, mission accomplished.