Half-Life gets a big update for its 25th anniversary

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By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

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Valve just released a 25th anniversary update for Half-Life that adds a whole bunch of new content, some welcome quality-of-life upgrades, and even Steam Deck support, according to an announcement on the Half-Life website. Also, you can download the game for free for a limited time.

Let’s start with the added content. The game now includes Half-Life Uplink, a “mini-campaign” that was originally available only on CDs from magazines and hardware manufacturers, the company says. There are four new multiplayer maps that Valve says “push the limits of what’s possible in the Half-Life engine.” Valve also added maps and multiplayer character models from a CD called Half-Life: Further Data.

Valve added some new settings, too, including the ability to play with a widescreen FOV and support for “a proper gamepad config.” The game’s UI has been updated so that it scales for larger screens. (“We built most of this stuff for 640x480 CRTs and apparently some of you have upgraded since then,” Valve says.) And Half-Life is now Steam Deck Verified, meaning it should work well on the Steam Deck without any fiddling. (Could be a great game to check out on the just-launched Steam Deck OLED!)

You really should check out all of the changes and the extensive list of patch notes — this is a meaty update. There are a couple important notes at the end: the anniversary edition is now “the definitive version” of Half-Life, Valve says, but the old version of the game is still available on