10 Video Games That Went Extreme To Protect Spoilers
7. Developing It In Secret For Almost FOUR YEARS - Half-Life: Alyx
The world was shocked when Valve finally announced a new Half-Life game in November 2019, the only catch being that it was a VR-exclusive title, Half-Life: Alyx.
The announcement also confirmed that the game would be releasing in March 2020, just four months later, leaving fans baffled that such a mammoth project could be near completion without so much as a credible peep leaking out online.
Though Valve doesn't comment much about the inside baseball aspects of their games, they did confirm that Alyx quietly began development a little more than four years before it was finally released.
Valve built the game's dev team from a small skeleton crew up to 80 members, the most for any of the company's titles to date.
Yet this is a miniscule number compared to the average AAA release, which can easily number 200+ employees, while most recent Assassin's Creed games feature the work of almost 1,000 people.
Working with a comparatively smaller team no doubt allowed Valve to create a more leak-averse inner-circle, such that the world was left collectively agape when Alyx was unveiled to the world without any substantial prior hints.