It's been whispered about for years now that Half-life creators Valve either are, or at least were, working on some kind of sci-fi game. There were rumours, there was rumoured concept art of spaceships, and now there might be test footage of the game (or at least its universe) in action as well.
Gray Horsfield, who worked at Valve as a physics engineer from 2006 until January of this year, has shared some concept showreels he put together during his time at the company, and tucked away amidst all the familiar-looking locations and effects from Half-Life and Portal are some very alien sequences.
The bits with the swarming bat things in the video below, Horsfield says it was just a test and not for a particular game. That's fine (and also very cool). It's the other stuff we're interested in, with the spaceships and the nebulas, beginning at the 1:17 mark.
If you look at the site of artist Peter König, who we've featured on Fine Art before, you'll see quite a lot of work focusing on science fiction. Lots of starships. There are also loads of alien designs, as well as costume pieces for what look like sci-fi characters.
While some/most of that can be chalked up to personal work or pieces for another client outside Valve, some of them also look a lot like the ships seen in Horsfield's clip. They're also identical to the pieces of art supposedly spilled a few months back as part of an alleged DOTA 2 "leak".