Dota 2 Leaked and so was HL2 Ep. 3

LOL is its closest competition. LOL was even based off of DOTA. It would be stupid for Valve to not make it F2P when a game that is almost identical is F2P.

That's the way i see it. Don't like hats don't use 'em. Problem solved.

The reason it goes HL, HL2: Ep1, HL2: Ep2, HL: Ep3 etc is because it is a story line

HL was one story

HL2 was the beginning of the next story and the "Episodes" are just chapters that continue this part of the story because the idea was that valve would quickly put together the next part of the game to be released when people have finished playing that chapter every 4-6 months or so thus preventing huge wait times for them to complete the entire HL2 storyline... sadly this backfired because of the Duke Nukem dilema... each time they would get far in the development of Ep3 the source engine would update causing them to have to redesign the game allowing for new and better gameplay mechanics, physics etc or a new project would come a long which needed more dedication

HL3 may happen when the HL2 story ends and a new one begins

TL:DR
HL was one story, HL2 is another with "Episodes" being chapters in the HL2 book... calling HL2:Ep3, HL3 would destroy the storyline of HL2... then when the actual HL3 story gets released it would have to be called HL4 thus confusing the shit out of people because they would assume HL4 was really HL2:Ep4 when it was really a new story in the halflife world