Half-Life becomes free on Steam and even gets updated with new content

Valve’s first game, Half-Life, was a notable commercial success and received widespread critical acclaim when it was released in 1998. This marks 25 years since the original Half-Life game was released, and on this occasion, Valve has released a major new update to the game Adding new features and support for modern displays, restoring cut and lost content, implementing full Steam Deck support, and much more.

“ We launched Half-Life on November 19, 1998 “Valve writes. “ We’re proud of what we built back then, and extremely grateful to the community of players who have enjoyed it ever since. In recent years, the game hasn’t received as much attention as many other games in our catalog, so we thought this milestone was a great opportunity to revamp the player experience and add new features. “.

What’s new in the update?

In terms of content additions, update brings Half-Life Uplink to a modern audience. This mini campaign was first launched on disk, in some magazines, and with hardware such as sound cards. There is also restored contentLike the original Valve logo intro, as well as the multiplayer maps and skins included on a retail CD in the late ’90s. Even Valve-level designers created four new multiplayer maps These are available in the new update.

Better, This version of Half-Life is now fully compatible with Steam Deckand has updated graphics settings, including HUD UI scaling for modern displays. “We designed most of these for 640×480 CRTs, and it looks like some of you have upgraded since then.“, states Valve with humor.

Finally, remember thisAn hour-long documentary about the game’s creation is above all else. To tell the story of how Half-Life came to be in the late ’90s, Valve teamed up with Secret Tape’s Danny O’Dwyer, and you can watch the entire documentary in the video below.

Since the release of Half-Life 2 in 2004, fans have been desperately waiting for news of a possible third game. However, we know the game existed, but Valve ultimately never finished it. Although the story is currently unfinished, Valve released the VR game Half-Life: Alyx in 2020, giving fans a glimpse into the world they desperately miss.