Half-Life 2 Gets Big 20th Anniversary Update And Is Now Free

Valve’s seminal shooter Half-Life 2 is now two decades old and to celebrate, the company has released a new documentary alongside a massive update to the game itself.

Half-Life 2 launched on November 16, 2004. Now, 20 years later, Valve has updated the landmark first-person shooter and added new features, fixed old bugs, improved some visuals, added more options, and integrated the Steam Workshop into the classic game. And if you somehow don’t own Half-Life 2, well, it’s free to grab over the weekend.

Perhaps the biggest new addition to the 2004 shooter as part of this update is that Lost Coast (a small free side-game), Episode 1, and Episode 2 are now included as part of the full Half-Life 2 package, so you can play all of these games within Half-Life 2.

Speaking of Lost Coast, ever since Valve launched that small experience it has included developer commentary in its games. However, Half-Life 2 lacked this feature, and that’s now been rectified with this update. Valve got the ol’ gang back together and recorded nearly 4 hours of commentary for the FPS. They also did a big documentary about Half-Life 2 and spilled the beans on Episode 3‘s development and cancellation, too.

Another big feature included in this update, alongside improved gamepad controls and auto-aim, is the inclusion of Steam Workshop support. This will make it easier than ever to add new levels, guns, and mods to the extremely moddable PC game. There’s basically 20 years’ worth of mods out there that can now be migrated to the Workshop and made easier than ever to access.

Valve also updated a ton of smaller parts of Half-Life 2, including fixing old bugs, adding new graphical options for blood splatter, tweaking HDR settings, and more. Thankfully, if you don’t like these changes or have a mod that relies on the old version, Valve isn’t removing the OG HL2 from Steam. You can still download it and enjoy all your mods and old memories.

And best of all, Valve has made Half-Life 2 (which now includes all the Episodes) totally free for the next three days. You have until November 18 to grab Half-Life 2 on Steam for $0 and you should. It’s one of the best games ever made, and the mods alone will keep you busy for the next 20 years.

If this seems familiar, that’s because back in November 2023, Valve did a similar big Anniversary update for the original Half-Life to celebrate 25 years of the franchise. Next up, Portal came out in 2007. I hope Valve has some fun planned for that anniversary, too!

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