Half-Life News

Valve considered making a 'B title' before Half-Life, until an exec told Gabe Newell 'that's just not gonna work… the company will fail'

Last year saw the 25th anniversary of Half-Life, one of the most important games in PC history and a spectacular debut for Valve. But in another timeline, it could've been the studio's second game...
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Former Valve exec says the company struggled to sell Half-Life until coming up with the ultimate 'one simple trick' of marketing manoeuvres: slapping a 'Game of the Year' sticker on the box

One of this year's GDC highlights was a talk by Monica Harrington, a founding member of Valve and the company's first chief marketing officer, who went over her history with the company that brought us Half-Life and Steam...
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Valve CMO threatened the company would walk away from games if it didn't own the rights to Half-Life—'It wasn't an idle threat—we weren't going to take on all of the risk to make other people rich'

It's the 2025 Game Developer's Conference, and one of this year's most interesting talks was delivered by Monica Harrington, a founding member of Valve and the company's first chief marketing officer...
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Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and even Day of Defeat have been updated by Valve

It was choppy, unreliable, and populated almost entirely by screamy mic spammers, but my word, do I miss the days of Half-Life Deathmatch Source. It's one of the enduring images of my own PC gaming past - a team of HLDM Source players, all wearing the G-Man skin, sprinting through the Black Mesa lab map and coating the walls with satchel charges. Half-Life 3 may very well be in the works, but Valve hasn't forgotten about the classics. Counter-Strike Source, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, and my beloved my HLDM have all gotten sudden, surprise patches.

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This early version of Half-Life Blue Shift includes a bizarre G-Man moment

Chaos has always seemed to follow Valve and its Half-Life series, and things were no different with its second expansion to the original game. Half-Life Blue Shift was initially meant to be a lucrative new piece of content for the planned Dreamcast port of the iconic shooter that was canceled at the last moment, and made its way to PC as an additional expansion instead. However, an early version of the Dreamcast build has been unearthed, and the Blue Shift it contains includes some intriguing differences and a bizarre G-Man placeholder.

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