Every Half-Life Game Is Now Free On Steam (theverge.com) 69
With Half-Life: Alyx launching in March 2020, Valve is offering gamers the opportunity to play every Half-Life game on Steam for free. "This is basically a two-month-long trial; you won't get to keep these games," notes The Verge. "Every game is compatible with Windows, Linux, and macOS (though all of these games are 32-bit apps, which means they don't work on macOS 10.15 Catalina)." From the report: This promotion includes the original Half-Life (the Source version of the game with added physics to make it feel more modern to play, not the beautiful remaster Black Mesa) and its expansions, Half-Life: Blue Shift and Half-Life: Opposing Force. Also available for free is Half-Life 2 and its two episodic expansions. (According to Valve, Half-Life: Alyx takes place before the events of Half-Life 2.) Valve's Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, its tech demo for HDR lightning, isn't included in this promotion. You can view all the Half-Life games on Steam and start downloading them here.
Re:Only the original is worth it (Score:4, Funny)
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The marines were easy to take out and exploit. Run away from them, go around a corner, and wait. They will go past it and you blast them with a shotgun. Nothing smart about that.
FEAR is the only game I have played where the AI was decent.
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To save some money to cover the cost of Alyx (Score:1)
I bought and played all Half-Life games when they were released back in the days, still have the CDs.
Seems Valve want people to see how great these games are without spending the money, as they will need it to buy and play Alyx.
Iâ(TM)m very interested in this game, but the cost of VR is quite steep. I wonder if a lot of people are going to spend the money.
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I hope Valve makes a non-VR Alyx in the future. I don't want to get a high end PC and wear VR stuff.
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Except they'll run into the problem of the hanging storyline after Half Life 2 Episode 2.
Half Life has a great storyline, and how they designed the dialog around the player is simply brilliant. (After all, Gordon (you) doesn't speak, and the dialog is designed around that).
And of course....
From Ars Technica [arstechnica.com], the top comment about Half Life Alyx, by dEvErGEN:
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I wonder if a lot of people are going to spend the money.
Given the Index was sold out and on backorder basically all through the holiday season the answer is mostly yes. And that's the most expensive option. This will run just fine on cheaper setups too.
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Steam has proven to be unreliable forcing bad upgrades on gamers. You know the crap, added advertising for DLC, change play style to incorporate pay to win, altered contract long after purchase, agree of the game no longer runs and all this forced on customers, can not run an earlier version, just the latest version to fuck over steams customers and not shits given by steam. The post purchase abuse of gamers is getting quite bad and being enable by steam by blocking gamers from using earlier versions of the
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DRM is something that needs rejecting when it actually impacts people. You know like dropping frame rates or preventing you from playing a game you bought.
Then we have Steam, a company that has a demonstrated history of standing by your game library despite shenanigans going on in the background. You want to play Star Control Origins? You can't. They publisher got sued, lost, and the game has been withdrawn from sale. Oh but I can still download and play it on Steam because I bought it on release day and th
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I have too many games in my Steam library. I don't want to lose them if Steam was to shut down. Hence I continue to support Valve so they keep Steam alive.
A pretty bad case of catch-22 that reminded me of the time when I started to 'back off' Star Citizen, while having been an original backer of the project.
It was when CIG introduced new space ships as stretch goals, that had to be
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"Steam" has done no such thing, and neither has Valve. Publishers however have. You're directing anger at the wrong party.
In fact Steam has a lovely little feature in that it *always* retains previous versions of games in their database. You just have to use the steam console to download them. Also once you do that Steam won't attempt to update them again until another version is released.
Beatsaber auto updated to v1.6 to add 360 support recently and broke all my mods in the process. It took me a whole 2 mi
Not free (Score:5, Informative)
Not free. Free trial.
You play then for two months (to build hype), then they take them back.
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Worth noting that, should you try them and find that you like them, you can purchase the entire Half-Life 1 collection for about £5 (probably around $7).
Seems like a pretty reasonable trial period - with a decent price if you decide that you want to take the plunge.
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At that price point and with the series' popularity I'd argue that if you like that kind of game (as opposed to RPGs, RTSs etc.) you should just grab it to have it.
Not free: CD-Key (Score:2)
People can also see if their CD key registers with Steam.
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Not free. Free trial.
You play then for two months (to build hype), then they take them back.
Half-Life: Indian Giver
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Ehh, pass. Let me know when I can buy them on GOG (Score:3, Interesting)
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If I remember correctly Half-Life 2 was one of the first if not the first game to require online authentication through Steam instead of just a CD key.
This caused a lot of privacy and software ownership concerns back then. But today a lot of people seem to have embraced Valve and Steam for various reasons. (I think it's some kind of Stockholm syndrome)
One of the most 'interesting' arguments I've heard for Steam support over GOG is that Valve s
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As bad as a walled garden is, games are just a form of entertainment... They are not holding your data captive, restricting your ability to earn a living or restricting anything essential in life.
If you lose access to a game it's an annoyance, if you lose access to a piece of software critical for your livelihood or critical for something like paying taxes you're up shit creek.
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And other than that: So what?
I can be pro open platforms like Linux and still against walled gardens even if they support Linux. That is how it can start, with 'just games'. And as that gains acceptance other corporations can smell the foolishness of customers and expand into that area with products that
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That is how it can start, with 'just games'. And as that gains acceptance other corporations can smell the foolishness of customers and expand into that area with products that are more than 'just games'.
Nah...They've already figured out the real money is in SaaS. [wikipedia.org] You don't ever have to worry about installing software ever again. We'll keep it safe in the cloud and you can access it whenever you want...as long as your subscription is current.
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However there are still issues with our internet infrastructure that makes it difficult to provide a wide audience with these services. Whenever there is a time critical task to be done, where latencies start to matter a lot, a remote service can't beat a localized one until they can figure out how to predict the future with sufficient accuracy.
That is why services like Google's Stadia are still dead on arrival for gamers that like to play fast paced games th
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It's the other restrictions imposed by Steam that made me look for alternatives. There are a few alternatives like GOG and on some you can get triple-A titles as well as good Indie games. My main problem with Steam is that I can only play 1 game at a time. If my wife wants to play too, she has to buy her own copy. Now that would b
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I would argue that entertainment, enjoyment and escapes (from reality) are essential to life. Otherwise what's that point of music, movies, theater, novels, poetry, watching a sunset etc etc etc. If your idea of life is holding onto your data and earning a living and paying taxes then your idea of a life is pretty dismal. So, no, losing access to a game is not a mere annoyance, it's taking away something you enjoy and at the end of the day enjoyment is a very important part of life -- not working in an offi
Re: Ehh, pass. Let me know when I can buy them on (Score:2)
As far as that goes, steam is markedly better than just about any other DRMd software I've used. All of purchases from 15-20 years ago work just fine. Can't say the same about Adobe, or others, for instance.
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I wonder how many people complaining about "walled gardens" when it comes to PC environments, own any product from Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, etc.
Nobody bitches about the fact that you can't plug a Wii game into your PS4, because it's understood that the hardware and software are converged. Is it really some terrible cyberpunk-hipster sin for a software developer to attempt to re-create, on otherwise modifiable PC hardware, the exact same "walled garden" video gamers have been happily playing in for the p
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Of course that means that it's also true that those devices are walled gardens. And that fact should not be denied.
I own an NES and Gameboy original (they still work). My parents bought them for me before I even had my first PC. Then I went for the PC platform with (Windows and Linux) and never looked back.
Re:Ehh, pass. Let me know when I can buy them on G (Score:5, Informative)
Because Steam was the first, most sensible, and has been the most reliable service.
Your disks, first example, make you eligible to get all the HL1 series games for free on your Steam account anyway. Just plug in the key. It was one of the first things they ever did on Steam.
They've given them away any number of times. We're talking 20+ year old games, still available on a double-click download, still eligible to redeem your CD-Key for free extra versions online that are updated regularly.
And that's precisely it... if you don't support the least-objectionable version of what everyone else has, they have absolutely no incentive to compete with them anyway. You not buying a game, just means you don't have those games. They're not suffering, they have made enough money from Steam to last, pretty much, forever. It's one of the biggest video game incomes to a single company in the world.
And... 16 years later my games still work like they did before Steam came along. My account still has all my games. I can install it on any number of PC's I like. I can literally install it at a friends house, sign in as me, play my copy of the game together, and then remove it. I can double-click install and play games I haven't played in 16 years. And I can buy, gift and redeem games through a simple website and get them instantly.
I'm only sorry that Steam doesn't do more normal software, I would happily pay for portable, follow-me versions of quite a lot of things I use, but they either have their own crappy ideas of how to do it, or they don't have a similar service at all.
I don't care about "friends", or streaming, or their controllers... and they respect that. I have small-mode Steam in my taskbar with notifications off. It stays there. I click it, I find my game in a pure list of games, I play my game, it goes away. Oh, and it backs up my saves/config for me, but that's optional too.
Valve are never going to do what you ask... it's their games and their launcher, in effect (that's all Steam is) and it's a damn sight less intrusive than ANYTHING else. I won't even install Origin. The GOG launcher is a mess of huge screens and images when I just want a list. I quite liked the Desura launcher but it went bankrupt, because nobody wanted to buy their games on other services. GOG even match some of my games to Steam, so I get Steam and GOG versions of them. I can't recall the last time I loaded GOG to play a game that's on my Steam.
Honestly, Steam gets a bad rap because of silly reasons. Just install it. Put it in small mode. Close it when you don't want it. You will not notice a single difference, except that you don't need your CD, and you can do it on your new computer in ten seconds and a few double-clicks rather than having to reinstall every damn thing all over again.
Whatever you're scared of... it's been running for 16 years and still dominates the PC games market, with well-funded rivals. It totally laughed off Games For Windows Live, which was an abomination far worse in scope. EA's bringing their games back from being Origin-only to Steam too because they realised their mistake when nobody followed them. Now it's competing with Windows Store, which is another abomination that I've never seen anyone actually use except by mistake.
Load steam. Take it out of your startup if you like. Put it in small mode. Turn off notifications. Redeem your key. Play those games you have, in a far more friendly and simple way. Delete them when you're done. Close Steam if you don't want it doing things on your system. And you can repeat that every year if you like, with everything you put on the account.
"If they go bankrupt then I'll lose my games". Yes. Same as anything. And your old CD's won't keep working forever, sorry to tell you this. I can't install Age of Empires 2 from CD and play it any more. You need all kinds of shit to make it work on modern Windows. But I can just double-click on AoE2 (several different modernised versions
Ehh, I'll still pass. (Score:3)
Congratulations, though, on misunderstanding my issues with Steam.
The problems with Steam? Yeah, they're as great with Epic, Games For Windows, the lot.
It's not "If they go bankrupt then I'll lose my games". It's "they control whether or not I play the game I purchased." Turn of Steam while playing? After a bit, it demands you turn it on again, "if only for a minute".
Can't play your games any more? Did you upgrade your computer system? Well, then, whose fault is it that you can't play them? Folks li
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> Steam has "Go offline".
Good to know that they made that a selectable option. But as I said, it's about "Can Steam control whether I am allowed to play my game". Being able to play offline is great, but (for this particular concern) that is "hiding from steam to keep them from controlling your game", which does nothing to put control back in the hands of the legitimate purchaser.
And as I intended to say, the games themselves may insist on a steam connection at regular intervals. Perhaps not Half-Li
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GoG does a lot of their work using emulators, which makes the task of supporting newer and different OS easier. I imagine with retrocomputing virtualization will become as important, and the death of Windows 7 will mean Proton will become more important, as well as people gaming under virtualization for security reasons (https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/).
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The biggest upside for Steam for me is that their Linux support is really, really good.
I found that I had amassed a pretty large Steam collection of indie games without even trying (mostly from the old Humble Indie Bundles and the like), although I had never bothered to set it up. Last year I set it up, and found that most of the "Windows-only" games work with no tweaking; also, a lot of the native Linux games which were difficult to get running on modern distributions due to relying on old libraries are n
Alyx (Score:3)
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So nothing to see except for the things to see, namely the 2 months you get to play HalfLife for free?
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I can't believe it's not free!!! How could the charge for a trial period?
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I usually hate hype... but Valve's Half-Life story has had me by throat since high school, so I'm buying into it.
2 months? (Score:5, Funny)
So the half-life is 1 month?
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Let me guess, it has a cliffhanger (Score:3)
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You gave up on a publisher due to them not producing a game you wanted and therefore will not buy other games from them? This has to be one of the most petty butthurt comments I've seen on the internet.
Your UID is low enough so I assume you're not in your teens, but seriously that is childish.
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Nothing is free on Steam
Dota2 immediately falsifies your claim.
Linux users can show their existence (Score:2)
VR-only game (Score:2)
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Are they hoping people going to rush to buy VR gear just to play their game?
No hoping about it. The Index was completely sold out the entire holiday period from the day of the Alyx announcement. People *did* rush out and buy hardware for this. Expect it to happen again when the game actually gets released. Oculus has also seen the biggest Christmas sales spike yet compared to the normal sales throughout the year, though I don't think they sold out on Rift S at any point, they did sell out of Quests.
Honestly this isn't a surprise. This is Valve playing catch-up after their critics a
How hard is it...? (Score:2)
Since the summary mentions it: How hard is it for them to recompile the games to create 64-bit compatible versions? I'd like to upgrade my OS at some point, but not at the cost of losing Team Fortress 2.
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Huh? Not sure what you're talking about TF2 runs just fine on 64bit OSes.
Orange box (Score:2)
Damn, after Christmas I saw that the orange box was $2.99. Now itâ(TM)s $19.99.
Massive Errors VCD Blocking Tool (Score:1)
Crashes on start. Run as Admin with compatibility for win 98.
CTSListBase: Misaligned list Error!
Google search leads to VCD Blocking Tool --- Valve Developer Community
Something was left in the old code that is some form of DRM.
I never got to play this game. The hype for this game died on the vine.
Sad really due to the fan base surrounding the orange box.
FUCK! (Score:2)
At least they were $1 or less each.
Ah, that competent editing. (Score:2)
Title: "Every Half-Life Game Is Now Free On Steam!"
Article: Except for these.