Half-Life 2 News

'Stop talking s*** about us' - Half-Life 2 mod blacklists a handful of YouTubers as 'anticitizens' and blocks them from playing

There is some spiteful drama in the Half-Life modding scene this week. The developers of a heavily criticised mod for Half-Life 2 are intentionally blocking a small number of YouTubers from playing that mod, using Steam IDs to effectively blacklist and ban specific people from running it. Instead of launching the game as expected, these players will see the first-person shooter crash, alongside an error message that reads: "STOP talking SH1T about us". This is an act of revenge for previous criticism of the mod, say the affected videofolks, who are described in the mod's code as "anticitizens".

s part of Valve's 20th anniversary Half-Life 2 documentary, Secret Tape (the same crew behind NoClip) spoke with some of the actors in the game's prominent roles. Among them, Barney Calhoun and G-Man voice actor Michael Shapiro explained some of his craft and theories behind the Half-Life series' iconic extradimensional stalker...
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Valve stiffed speedrunners by adding an invisible wall in its Half-Life 2 tuneup, so now it's fixed the fix and says 'enjoy'

The 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 saw Valve release a major surprise update for the PC gaming hall-of-famer (as well as an excellent two hour documentary). It integrated Episodes 1 and 2 with the base game (so you can now play through the entire experience seamlessly), added a new commentary track from the old gang, and for the coup de grace every location was given a glow-up: "Every map in Half-Life 2 has been looked over by Valve level designers to fix longstanding bugs, restore content and features lost to time, and improve the quality of a few things like lightmap resolution and fog."..
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November 26, 2024 Update

Enable support to keep music playing during level transitions throughout the base Half-Life 2 campaign (no convar needed).
Added support for displaying an active Workshop campaign name in your Steam friends list.
Added a slider to the settings menu to allow scaling stick sensitivity for gamepads.
Fixed issue with overlapping commentary tracks if a commentary track was playing between level loads.
Fixed issue where gamepad buttons may be permanently stuck pressed after saving the game.
UI fonts updated for better support in Cyrillic languages.
Fixed Thai font rendering on Linux.
Added initial support for Ukranian and Vietnamese.
Various crash fixes when switching between episodes.
Fixed soundscape playback for the Citadel menu background map.
Removed collision from an underwater tube that speed runners enjoy.
Updated localization files.

Half-Life 2 testers horsing around with physics props 'to make the 47th playthrough of the game more interesting' probably had no idea it would result in Gabe Newell launching a garden gnome into space 16 years later

"Little Rocket Man" is truly one of the greatest bits in videogame history⁠—a challenging achievement in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 that requires you to carry a cherubic little garden gnome named "Gnome Chompski" through the entirety of the campaign and deposit the wee fellow on a rocket ship to another dimension in the final level. The Chompski achievement returned in several later Valve games, including Half-Life: Alyx. It reached apotheosis with Gabe Newell's 2020 IRL recreation, with a tangible Chompski launched into space as a fundraiser for a pediatric charity. And it all began with bored Valve QA testers messing around with physics props in Half-Life 2...
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