Half-Life News

Half-Life's most controversial version has been delisted by Valve

Half-Life is officially 25 years old. You might need a moment to absorb that - one of the greatest shooters of all time, which introduced the world to Black Mesa, Gordon Freeman, and the greatest NPC scientists in history, launched a full quarter of a century ago. To take away the sting, Valve has released a slew of new Half-Life material, including an updated version of the original game, restored cut characters and features for Half-Life Deathmatch, and a lot more. But there's one version of Half-Life that has just been airbrushed from history. As the FPS hits its silver anniversary, Valve has just delisted one iteration from Steam forever.

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Half-Life's 25th anniversary celebrations have caused a resonance cascade in its Steam player-count, surging to a new all-time high over the weekend

Half-Life, the little-known game about a monorail enthusiast who undergoes the most brutal job interview in history, reached its 25th birthday on Sunday. And Valve was in a surprisingly celebratory mood for a company that is normally as reticent as it is forward-looking. On its YouTube channel, Valve released a brand-new documentary that brought the original Half-Life team together for a captivating chew over its development...
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Gabe Newell on making Half-Life's crowbar fun: 'We were just running around like idiots smacking the wall'

To celebrate its 25th birthday, Valve updated Half-Life and gave it away for free. At the same time, it released an hour-long documentary in which the original developers talked about making the influential FPS. In the documentary, Valve's co-founder Gabe Newell explained why game delays are OK, but also took some time to explain the theory of fun Valve came up with while developing the original Half-Life...
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November 19, 2023 Update

Steam Networking and Server Browser improvements.
The HUD will no longer scale to 2x size at 1024x768 and 1280x720 resolution.
Fixes for GL Overbright shaders.
Fixes for text alignment in custom in-game menus at various resolutions.
Fixed 357 zoomed crosshair appearing as the wrong texture at the largest screen resolutions.
Fixed some server events that cause crashes with high player counts.
Fixed crash if the user set their Field of View to 0 and then zoomed in with the crossbow.
Fixed window icons drawing inverted for mods.
Fixed the inability to launch Half-Life: Blue Shift and Day of Defeat, as well as many other mods.

NOTE: Many GoldSrc mods, Counter-Strike included, may still have compatibility issues with the updated version of the Half-Life engine. While we work on improving mod support it is advisable to install the beta "steam_legacy" build of Half-Life (which can be selected in the game's properties page) when playing mods.

Half-Life triples its own Steam record after big Valve update

With Half-Life still free to keep for a brief time and Valve releasing a colossal 25th-anniversary update for the iconic FPS, we've seen a monumental player increase in the game. Between restored cut content, entirely new multiplayer maps, and even an hour-long documentary celebrating the game, Half-Life is well and truly back.

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