Valve Celebrates Half-Life 2’s 20th Anniversary with Offers, Game Update, and Documentary

This weekend, Valve celebrated the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, originally published on November 16, 2004.

The first-person shooter, one of the most popular games in the history of the genre, has received a major update that combines Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Half-Life. 2: Lost Coast in the base game.

Taking the opportunity, Valve overhauled all of the game’s maps to fix bugs that still remained 20 years later, restored lost elements, and improved the quality of graphical elements such as fog.

Additionally, new graphical options have been added to allow you to choose between the original blood and fire effects or the effects featured in the episodes. Gamepad controls have also been improved, Steam Workshop support has been added, and more; You can check out the full list of patches here.

Along with this update, the Secret Tape documentary was released, which looks at the development of Half-Life 2 with many of the original game’s developers, including Gabe Newell himself.

The documentary examines some of Valve’s most difficult moments, such as the hacking and leaking of the source code of an unfinished version of Half-Life 2. If you are interested in this story, you can read our article “The Boy Who Stole Half-Life 2. Life 2” , in which we speak to the hacker himself, Axel Gembe.

There is also talk of Half-Life 2: Episode 3, which was in development but never published. As stated in the documentary, at that time the team had to throw all their resources into refining Left 4 Dead. By the time they wanted to return to Episode 3, they thought they were already too late and that it would have to be accompanied by a big jump in the engine. On the other hand, the team believes that if they had released Half-Life 2: Episode 3, neither Portal 2 nor Left 4 Dead 2 would likely exist.

To top it all off, the Half-Life franchise has gone on sale on Steam. Half-Life 2 itself is free to activate on Steam until today, November 18, 7:00 pm (CET), but there are also discounts on Half-Life, Half-Life: Alyx, and other Valve games. page.

Thanks to this weekend’s celebration, Half-Life 2 surpassed the highest number of concurrent players on Steam since records began (in late 2008), with more than 64,000 people enjoying the shooter simultaneously.