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Anyone Else been following the countdown at blackmesa.com?
(blackmesa.com)
Rule 0: Be civil
Rule #1: No spam, porn, or facilitating piracy
Rule #2: No advertisements
Rule #3: No memes, PCMR language, or low-effort posts/comments
Rule #4: No tech support or game help questions
Rule #5: No questions about building/buying computers, hardware, peripherals, furniture, etc.
Rule #6: No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
Rule #7: No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts
Rule #8: No off-topic posts/comments
Rule #9: Use the original source, no editorialized titles, no duplicates
Prior to Nov 2022, the domain just had a spam page. After that, it just had this: https://web.archive.org/web/20221105002601/https://blackmesa.com/
And it was like that until recently.
The Black Mesa team has support from Valve, but I don't think they're actually employees or anything.
Edit: yeah the more I look into this, the more certain I am that it's an ARG.
Wait.
Black Mesa Technology, Inc. is a real, registered company in the state of Massachusetts: https://corp.sec.state.ma.us/CorpWeb/CorpSearch/CorpSummary.aspx?sysvalue=_HQ3ku.qlnLpl8nUgbgbwS_ZHmpGWTQOFgh1PxfQUAs-
Current business address is 9 Alfred Cir, Bedford, MA 01730. Google Maps has that as Lexington Alarm Systems, but their site says they moved out of that building in Jan 2019, which somewhat lines up with Black Mesa turning up.
Maybe they really are a real company? But if they are, they're doing a real good job of making it look like they're not. Maybe for free advertising.
I am also capable of registering a company, though. Dig further. You'll find that they indeed secured a grant. But again, all this takes is a reasonable application for that grant as a part of a budget for a viral marketing campaign. I want to reiterate that this is absolutely within the means of valves resources.
This is what viral marketing campaigns do.
I WANT TO BELIEVE