Half-Life Is Free on Steam until November 20 in Celebration of Its 25th Anniversary

Peter_Brosdahl

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Half-Life celebrates its 25th anniversary tomorrow and Steam is giving it away for free in celebration of the award-winning game's initial debut. Released in 1998 Half-Life went on to become game-of-the-year in over 50 pubilications and continues to have interest from newcomers to franchise and veterans alike. Valve continues to tease fans of the franchise, who hope for a 3rd game, with its spin-off release Half-Life Alyx, and future game development tidbits, but for now those who don't already have it, have the opportunity to get it for free. Valve has also updated the game with new maps, restored content and menu artwork, buf fixes, and even a short film. Valve has said that it considers this updated version as the definitive version and it will continue to provider support for it moving forward. This could be the perfect time to revist the inconic game in preparation for its sequel that is currently getting the RTX full ray tracing treatment. The 25th anniversary will be free until November 20 so grab it while you can.

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Grimlakin said:
I have to wonder how many people don't have Half Life in their steam Libraries? Seems like one at this point that Valve would just add to everyone's library. ;)
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Most people of a certain age range might have it, but more recent generations? doubtfull

Also while I had the og, I still managed to "add" this one to my library
 
I had the original on compact disk, and it is not in my Steam library. In fact, I haven't even touched my Steam library in almost 10 years, because I don't need or want anyone collecting data about my game-playing choices or activities. Besides, first-person shooters are not my cup of tea; I simply do not enjoy them, but good on others who do.
 
The timing of this is interesting as I've been in somewhat of a retro mood lately. I spent a good chunk of the last two weekends playing Metro LL in 3D/4K and UW. I've actually never played this because it came out during that time when I had stopped gaming for a bit. Tried it last night and felt further inspired to re-grab AvP2 (still need to reinstall it) and then did a session of AvP 2010. I also reinstalled a ton of older gamess on my old laptop w/ the 18.4" screen since its fun to game on with the older stuff.
 
Yea I've had the itch for some older games. Actually went to play Prototype 2 and it simply doesn't work... tooo many cores on my system. You literally have to disable cores or spin up a special VM that is core limited just to play the game. And honestly I work with VM's every day... I don't want to mess with that on my personal system (well outside of AI tinkering... that reminds me... I need to either order another 32 gig kit or when I refresh my desktop go with max ram on the new platform.. AI is stupid hungry for ram... and learn to program... I have a long list here.. ugh.).

So quick question to my fellow techies. Is there a good base VM I can use that I can attach my video card to, in order to get gaming performance out of it so I can play these older games too? (Kind of wish Steam offered a 'virtual box' sort of environment for running games like this. I know they know how... look at the steam deck!
 
Grimlakin said:
I have to wonder how many people don't have Half Life in their steam Libraries? Seems like one at this point that Valve would just add to everyone's library. ;)
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Yeah, seems tough to imagine that anyone who is into PC gaming might not have Half-Life by now.

I mean, Yeah, I get it, its old, but still....
 
Oddly enough I have the disks but it was NOT in my library. HL2 and it's many addon's were. So that has been corrected.
 
Grimlakin said:
Oddly enough I have the disks but it was NOT in my library. HL2 and it's many addon's were. So that has been corrected.
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My younger brother actually got it as a Christmas present in 1998, but we shared all of our games at the time. Then I accidentally registered the key to my WON when I started playing the Counter-Strike mod in 2000, not realizing that would consume the key and he would no longer be able to use it 😅

Luckily enough he didn't care any more at that point though.

I later transitioned it from WON to Steam when I signed up for it to pre-order the Half Life 2 / Counter-Strike Source bundle in 2004.

Not proud of pre-ordering, but I didn't know any better back then :p Games hadn't started having terrible launches yet.
 
Grimlakin said:
With some Dev's I would still preorder today.
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Rare for me, but there are a handful.

I'll probably pre-order the next installment in the Sid Meier's Civilization franchise, just because. It's a day one buy for me either way, and a franchise I care about, so I want to show support in order to encourage future development.

If another Deus Ex sequel came along, I'd be tempted as well. For the same reason. Encourage them to actually develop a title that otherwise may not make it to market.

I have considered pre-ordering S.T.A.L.K.E.R.2, as those games are some of my favorite from the last 20 years, and I know they are going through challenges of the geopolitical sort right now - so supporting the devs and making it easier for the game to launch seems like a positive thing, but I haven't actually gotten around to doing it (or even checking if they are accepting pre-orders, but I presume they are)

That's about it right there.

What with the time value of money to consider, early sales are MUCH MUCH better for developers/publishers than later sales, and if there are titles that might be teetering on the brink of actually making it out, pre-ordering can be a way to vote with your wallet, but it is not without risk.
 
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