Now here is a pleasant surprise. Valve has just made the first Half-Life game available for free on Steam. Until November 20th, PC gamers can visit its Steam store page and acquire their free copy.
Half-Life is Valve’s debut title which originally came out in 1998. This was one of the first FPS games that managed to provide a cinematic experience. Not only that but it came with a multiplayer mode, and it was friendly to modders. Let’s also not forget that some truly incredible MP games originated from it. Counter-Strike anyone? Or how about Team Fortress Classic? Half-Life was a phenomenon when it came out.
So, if for some reason you don’t own this classic FPS, you can go ahead and acquire your free copy from Steam. As said, the game will be free until November 20th. So, grab it while you still can.
Speaking of Half-Life, I also suggest taking a look at these amazing mods for it. For instance, there is an incredible Path Tracing Mod that you can download. This mod was created by sultim_t, the man behind the Path Tracing mods for Doom, Serious Sam TFE and Quake. Then we have this AI-enhanced HD Texture Pack. And if for some reason you don’t like these mods, you can give Half-Life: Enriched a go. Half-Life: Enriched aims to rework all of the original Half-Life maps in the single-player campaign. Lastly, Half-Life: Delta is a total conversion mod, featuring 4 chapters and 31 gameplay maps.
Have fun!
UPDATE:
Apparently, Valve has just removed the “Get Half-Life” section of the store page. So I guess it was a mistake (or someone pushed the free button earlier than planned). We’ll be sure to update this story when the game becomes available for free again.
UPDATE 2: Half-Life is now free to own on Steam. Until November 20th, you can acquire your free copy. Valve has also released a one-hour documentary that you can find below.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
When does this go live? Showing as £7.19 for me.
Same here, only in €
Im in Europe and its not free for me neither
I did some more reading. Apparently it was made free for only 1 hour. Either an error, or made free too early.
stfu fray
ZeroPatience.
I only saw PatienceZero’s comment when I wasn’t logged in (as muted). Why should I stfu, and why so toxic? It was likely my follow-up comments here (now deleted) that raised the fact that the giveaway was only up for an hour or so, suggesting this was accidently posted early or not intended (as is now indicated in the updated article text).
I don’t know why you’re replying to me.
my middle name
great game.
Certainly doesn’t show up as free for me.
It came out on my birthday Nov 19th. I had played the free demo beforehand I think I got either online or a disc in the PeeSeeGamer Mag back in the day (HalfLife Uplink I think was the name). Was hooked instantly. I still run a multiplayer server to this day lol.
Nothing beats the feeling of when FPS started a new era of gaming. Wolf3D, Doom, Half Life, Unreal……
( A few others came before those, but the above games really drove the genre into the stratosphere)
I don’t know about the other old timers here, but for me it’s been a long time since a game has gotten me amped up so much. Rushing home from work to jump on ICQ and GameTalk forum and WonNetwork (pre-Steam)….LOL
I got hours of enjoyment from those games.
Well said!
Nothing like that feeling of enjoying a computer game so much that ya can’t wait to get off of school or work to get home and play that “game” that you love so much!
Ah, yes! Day dreamt about it in school! 🙂
Half Life Uplink was indeed the demo. And Valve just added it into the Steam release with the 25th Anniversary update.
The jump from Half Life to Half Life 2 in 6 years still blows my mind.
Now we get games that look worse than games that came out 15 years before.
Should have announced what Epic is offering for free instead of a bs glitch story.
Huh? It’s not free at all on my side.
Not like I need it, though.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b143d5f61df4b008dbc8437ca106fad49fe3b37b9136924c213a87ed179bd49c.png
it’s not free
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8500188b58b43790a0f22b7599f648875cc5eaa0258d5b6c570450a752f7f637.jpg
Probably a new game is coming. There is a reason why they give this masterpiece for free.
Or…you know, it’s the 25th anniversary of a more than legendary game that made a legendary company and platform with legendary amounts of money.
But, being this special of a date, I’d be ready to eat my balls if they finally announce HL3. And I don’t even like HL! 🤣
https://media3.giphy.com/media/KcY773VVhnBVbYqI5L/giphy-downsized-small.mp4
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/franchise_half-life
Back when game companies were founded by a very small group of extremely talented developers/designers, who made games that defined and changed the future of gaming forever!
Half-Life, what a masterpiece! Just to think in ~2.5 years between 1996-98, we had Quake, Quake 2, Unreal, Half-Life really shows how talented and passionate the people behind those games were. They cared about making something amazing, and the money came as a result. Nowadays, it’s all about cashing in most amount of money with least amount of effort.
Those were the golden days….
It’s worth noting that this comes with a big update that brings numerous features and improvements to the game, but John was in a hurry to publish some UE5 trash articles
Yes, there are some changes, for example they finally fixed gl_overbright after so many years, so now the lighting in this game look bright and vivid again. They even added a proper gamepad support (probably for steam deck players).
Overbright is fixed but for now it breaks underwater fog