I finally heard from Valve spokesman Doug Lombardi, after trying all day to verify whether the venerable Bellevue game company was indeed being sold to Google.

The intriguing story began with a report by Charlie Demerjian, a reporter at British tech rag The Inquirer, who heard it from sources while covering the Game Developers' Conference taking place in Austin, Texas.

It came out of left field and surprised game insider types who usually know about such things.

But Google's reaching out to game developers -- about platforms, as opposed to seeking games -- and Valve has developer credibility to spare. Valve also has powerful cloud-services technology for delivering content.

Google wouldn't comment on "rumor and speculation," a spokesman said, but that chestnut didn't close the door completely.

Lombardi tamped down the news mid-day with a comment to an MTV blog, saying the story was "complete fabrication."

Finally, Lombardi told me late afternoon that "there's no truth to the rumor."

I still wonder, though, if perhaps Google made an approach or the companies were discussing some sort of partnership, weird as it sounds.