Half-Life is celebrating its 25th anniversary by offering a bunch of free updates to the original game for loyal fans.
It is truly hard to believe that Half-Life, one of the best Valve games of all time, was released all the way back in November of 1998. Some of us are thinking “but that was just a few years ago, wasn’t it?!”
Also, if you would like to take a walk down memory lane with the development team of this beloved first-person shooter, there’s an anniversary documentary that just released today as well.
Once you’re done watching that, let’s dive into what is new for this celebration update.
Half-Life Free Updates
The Half-Life 25th Anniversary update brings “Game updates, bug fixes, and new content!” to the first entry in this fan-favorite franchise.
The update includes the long lost Half-Life Uplink DLC that was originally a CD exclusive given to magazine and hardware manufacturers after the game went gold.
Similarly, three multiplayer maps have been restored from the Half-Life: Further Data retail edition. There are also four entirely new multiplayer maps, “Contamination”, “Pool Party”, “Disposal”, and “Rocket Frenzy”.
Of course, some much needed quality-of-life updates have also been added to this new patch.
That includes widescreen output, upscaled UI, disable texture smoothing, lighting fixes, Linux support, controller compatibility, and Steam networking support.
Oh, and appropriately, Half-Life is now fully verified for the Steam Deck. As it should be on the wildly successful portable gaming device from Valve themselves.
For a full list of updates and fixes, you can find that on the bottom of the page here on Half-life.com.
Get The Update
Half-Life is currently available for free on the Steam Store. To be clear, that is both the full game and the update 100% free. So there is no good excuse to not add it to your library for now or to keep safe for later.
This was our number one pick for the best 90s PC games of all time and made a ton of appearances on Retro Dodo over the years. It goes without saying that we absolutely love this game.
So today’s update is an awesome way to celebrate this incredible game and to remind us of why it’s still on many people’s best of all time list.
