10 Cryptic Messages Found In Video Games We'll Never Understand
2. Xccr - Half-Life 2
As soon as you walk out into City 17 at the start of Half-Life 2, you can look up and see a distinctive red billboard with the letters "xccr" scrawled on it.
It didn't long after the game's release for fans to figure out that the billboard was steering fans towards xccr.com, which while now offline, courtesy of the Wayback Machine we can see was a website modelled after a computer terminal.
Ever since Half-Life 2's release over 15 years ago, fans have speculated on the link between the billboard and the website - were they part of an abandoned ARG, or did a fan set the site up independently after seeing the billboard in the game?
The owner of the website isn't public information, though it is known that the site sprang up just a few days after Half-Life 2's release, which would certainly give a motivated prankster enough time to throw something together.
The predominant theories are that it's either an unfinished ARG for Half-Life 2, or a fan-made ARG for the TV series Lost, given that the site quotes the show by asking players, "Are you him?"
Others have suggested the sign doesn't read "xccr" but actually letters of Cyrillic script which look similar and stand for "household, Soviet, social, and country."
There's still no conclusive answer, and knowing Gabe Newell and co., there probably never will be.