Valve celebrates 25 years of Half-Life with feature-packed Steam update

Enlarge / It's been a while since I've seen some of those once-ubiquitous logos... (credit: Valve)

This Sunday, November 19, makes a full 25 years since the original Half-Life first hit (pre-Steam) store shelves. To celebrate the anniversary, Valve has uploaded a feature-packed "25th anniversary update" to the game on Steam, and made the title free to keep if you pick it up this weekend.

Valve's 25th Anniversary Update page details a bevy of new and modernized features added to the classic first-person shooter, including:

• Four new multiplayer maps that "push the limits of what's possible in the Half-Life engine"
• New graphics settings, including support for a widescreen field-of-view on modern monitors and OpenGL Overbright lighting (still no official ray-tracing support, though—leave that to the modders)
• "Proper gamepad config out of the box" (so dust off that Gravis Gamepad Pro)
• Steam networking support for easier multiplayer setup
• "Verified" support for Steam Deck play ("We failed super hard" on the first verification attempt, Valve writes)
• Proper UI scaling for resolutions up to 3840x1600
• Multiplayer balancing updates (because 25 years hasn't been enough to perfect the meta)
• New entity limits that allow mod makers to build more complex mods
• A full software renderer for the Linux version of the game
• Various bug fixes
• "Removed the now very unnecessary 'Low video quality. Helps with slower video cards' setting"

One of four new multiplayer maps added to Half-Life's 25th anniversary update. (credit: Valve)

In addition, the new update includes a host of restored and rarely seen content, including: