Because Valve does whatever it feels like doing and honestly, I love them for it. I wish more companies would follow in their footsteps (e.g. not going public), but few have the luxury of being founded by someone who was already set for life financially at the time.

Valve isn't beholden to any external shareholders, and Steam is as close to a money-printing machine a private company can have. Combine that with the fact that Gabe and company seem to have pretty decent values in line with their customers' interests, and you get nice outcomes like this.

I think it speak mlre aboub Gabe's ethics than whatever model of technical causality we want to impose on this.

And let's be realistic, this is going to sell an absolute crapload of HL2 to a whole new generation of gamers.

I don't think so. HL2 is an old game by now, way older than HL1 was when HL2 came out (6 years from HL1 to Hl2, 19 years from HL2 to now) and I just don't see it appealing to players unless they're going back to view older games.

They make 30% on almost every PC video game sale in the west. Even if they sell 10 million copies of HL2 tomorrow, it's only going to move their bottom-line marginally.

And that's ignoring the fact that HL2 is 90% off right now ($1) and they're giving away HL1 for free.

No. Valve just does whatever Valve wants.

> Gabe and company seem to have pretty decent values in line with their customers' interests

Sure just like lying about HL3 and making people die waiting for the end of story, LOL, LMAO even

Some people are to invested in fictional content.

That's hardly an excuse for leading on your fans and then ghosting them for decades.

I like Valve / Gabe / Steam, but let’s not be false and pretend that they weren’t coasting before the build-up to the Deck release. Steam had gone without significant updates for almost half a decade.

They released a massive overhaul a few months ago.

That's not true in the slightest. They too some risks* that didn't pay off but that's what happens when you do whatever you feel like.

* - big picture mode - steamlink - vr integration (somewhat successful)

They also did the Steam Controller (while the hardware was a failure, the software developed for it lives on in the Deck) and the Steam Link (the hardware there was more successful, but porting the software to smart TVs and streaming boxes and EoL’ing the hardware was the right move going forward).

Big picture mode was completely stagnant, until like stated, they started working on the Deck. The new Big Picture we have is nothing but a Steam Deck UI backport. Hell, for a while it would use Steam Deck’s screen ratio no matter what, meaning you’d get black bars on 16:9 screens.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great they’re finally pushing things again, but they were stagnant for a very long while. Ramming the downvote button in a blind panic doesn’t make that less true :)

Besides second order stuff like that it might help some Steam Deck sales (mostly by demonstrating their commitment to the platform and attract other companies to develop for it, moreso than anybody rushing out to buy a Steam Deck specifically to play Half-Life), the fact that Valve does stuff like this that's not directly "make all the money right this second"-driven is in no small part why Valve has such goodwill with the PC gaming community.

In theory, it's not that hard to compete with Steam. Valve's cut of game sales is massive, and a competitor could easily slash into that to undercut them. Which is what Epic Games is trying to do. Yet, Valve maintains an extremely dominant market condition largely predicated on that goodwill.

And, of course, exactly because of that dominant market condition, they've got all the money they could possibly want to burn on random vanity projects.

Well it's not exactly trivial to build a software as extensive without just being a rip-off and having the share of games at launch. Gamers are extremely picky and it costs tons to build out a scalable system. This is where Epic failed. Sure they gave me a ton of free games, but their UX was horrible that I just never went to it and stayed within Steam.

Epic launcher actually randomly crashes my display window manager from time to time, I just can't have it running in the background as I do with Steam.

No, the software part really is trivial compared to getting developers and gamers on board. Epic failing at it is an anecdote, not proof of anything.

It's just a little dose of nostalgia. I think Half Life was one of the highest rated games of all time before Baldur's Gate 3 (both are 97% at PCGamer, for example). That's a pretty rare accomplishment worth celebrating, especially for those of us who grew up with the series...

I do kinda wish they incorporated the fan Black Mesa remake and improvements, though.

> I do kinda wish they incorporated the fan Black Mesa remake and improvements, though.

No thanks. Black Mesa is a nice game, but it is not Half-Life 1 and should not replace it.

More content for their Steam Deck handheld?

Half Life 3 already happened and it was called Half Life: Alyx.

Alyx was really good (though I'm a wuss and couldn't finish it) but not a continuation of the cliffhanger that we've been sitting on for 16 years since episode 2.

When/if HL3 is announced, I actually believe it might break parts of the internet.

A decade ago, yes. Valve was riding high on the dual successes of Dota 2 and Portal 2, we were only 6 years out from HL2Ep2, and CS:GO was newly released.

Today, not so much. Aside from a prequel, the series had been dormant for as longer than it had been alive (11 years alive 1998-2007, 13 years dormant 2007-2020), and the prequel required a pricey hardware peripheral to run. It’d get attention, but it wouldn’t be that big of a deal at this point.

*interquel - Alyx takes place after HL1.

Mild HL:ALyx spoiler: If you'd actually finished the game, you'd know that it does continue that cliffhanger (briefly)

Cliffhanger A swapped with Cliffhanger B

No spoilers then, but the ending of Alyx does retcon the old cliffhanger.

I need to just watch a lets play at some point

> the ending of Alyx does retcon the old cliffhanger.

that's semi-disappointing, at least that they'd do it in a game so few have the ability to actually play.

And was played (and playable) by almost no one, sadly.

I’m waiting for an update that lets me play it without VR. I’m probably never going to have a VR rig that’ll play it. My wife has a couple for work (not capable of playing that game, though) and we’re both free to use them for whatever we like, but never bother. Certainly not gonna pay for a headset just for one game. I have enough barely-used electronic crap around as it is.

I tried it in VR for half an hour or so. It was really nice compared to most VR shovelware. High production values, fun interactivity, etc.

But remove the VR and you're left with an above-average short FPS that would've been entirely unremarkable if not for the Half-Life tie-in. If they released it for non VR, it would probably get trashed just for not being HL3.

Honestly I don't think you're missing much. It's a good VR game only because the bar for VR gaming in general is so much lower.

Well, yeah. It wouldn't have worked if it had been a proper shooter. Imagine playing Doom Eternal in VR. It's going to suck.

I almost broke my TV with Alex and that is a slow, slow game.

Serious Sam in VR is pretty fun.

AFAIK there is a mouse/keyboard mod but it makes the game way too easy.

a really incredible VR game though

I thought Half-Life was a series of PC games, but I own a PC but I can't play Alyx. What happened there?

I played it fine on my PC. But I have a VR headset for my PC. I'm not sure that makes it not a PC game.

In the 90s you might have needed to buy a graphics card or sound card to play a game, but it was still a PC game.

All games ended up needing a GPU and a soundcard - in fact they became so necessary that all CPUs and motherboards today come with a GPU and a soundcard respectively. While VR headsets were a gimmick of the moment.

(Yes I know some CPUs come with no GPU but that's because you will buy a discrete GPU which only furthers my point)

If I released a game on PC that required a peripheral, like a racing wheel, does that make it not a PC game?

> all CPUs [...] today come with a GPU

This is not even remotely true.

Aside from the obvious meaning of your comment - there is a mod which makes Alyx playable without VR: https://github.com/bfeber/HLA-NoVR

Just like a lot of early 3D PC games weren't possible to play without a graphics accelerator card (GPU for you younglings) which not a lot of people had, these new VR games are not possible to play without VR hardware.

Doesn't mean early 3D PC games weren't PC games, and it doesn't mean that contemporary VR games aren't also PC games.

It's VR only.

vr only

I think it's VR only.

It's not a proper Half-Life game if you don't play as Gordon Freeman.

Alyx also misses many of the things that made the HL series great and replaces them with "modern" game design anti-features. Not looking forward to future HL games going even further in that direction.

The new voice actor doesn't even sound anything like alyx FFS and her lines are a perfect argument why the silent protagonist in the HL games was not a mistake.

It still makes a few dollars. New players are born every day. The original Half Life has a lot of sentimental value for the company and they won't let it rot.

fwiw, to your first point, they're also giving HL1 away for free (to keep) right now.

Don't these new players mostly buy newer games? I know GOG exists but I guess there are few people who buy games older than themselves.

Entirely marketing for steam. It coincides with the Oled Steam Decks, for example.

I guess that's it and some general marketing for their stuff. I doubt there are all that many people who would pay for HL1 remaining after 25 years unless it's a remake or something.