Half-Life 2 was released 20 years ago now, but it just had its best week ever. For the seminal FPS game’s 20th anniversary on November 16, developer Valve released a surprise update that makes it easier than ever to experience the entire journey of Half-Life 2 and learn more about its making. On top of that, Half-Life 2 went free on Steam for the people who have somehow avoided playing it all these years, all of which led to a massive spike in players.
Not every game still gets major updates two decades after launch, but then again, not every game is Half-Life 2. It seems only fitting that a title that set a new high bar for shooters and is still widely considered one of the best games of all time would get special treatment. The Half-Life 2 20th anniversary patch adds the Episode 1 and Episode 2 DLC into the base game, where you can select them individually from the main menu or play them in sequence.
The patch also helps bring Half-Life 2 a bit more up to speed with 20 years of technological progress in games. In addition to fixing some bugs in the original game, the patch adds higher resolution models, more detailed lighting, and improved blood and fire effects across the board. Half-Life 2 is also getting Steam Workshop support, making it easier to find and install mods.
More exciting than any of those tweaks to the game is the behind-the-scenes content being added in the patch. Half-Life 2 now features in-game developer commentary. Valve’s Portal and the Half-Life 2 DLC included audio commentary from the developers at launch, giving players a way to learn about the design process while playing. Half-Life 2 has now been given the same treatment, with new commentary tracks recorded by original members of the game’s development team. According to the patch notes, the new commentary tracks add up to three and a half hours of audio spread throughout the game.
If you’re looking for even more inside information on Half-Life 2, you’re in luck. Alongside the updates to the game, Valve has released a small collection of videos from various early Half-Life 2 demos, plus a feature-length documentary on the game’s creation. The two-hour documentary covers the saga of Half-Life 2’s development, which includes a very controversial release date delay, the game’s source code being stolen and shared online, and a legal battle between Valve and publisher Interplay. It’s produced by Secret Tape, a spinoff of the independent documentarians at Noclip, which also created a 25th anniversary documentary for the original Half-Life in 2023.
As one final treat, Valve made Half-Life 2 free on Steam over its anniversary weekend. Given how popular the game is, there’s a good chance anyone who’s vaguely interested has owned it for years, but it’s a nice gesture nonetheless. And clearly players new and old are happy with the big additions to the game. Over the weekend, SteamDB, which tracks what Steam users are playing, recorded the highest ever concurrent player count for Half-Life 2, sitting just above 64,000 players. For context, that’s 10,000 higher than Valve’s new shooter Deadlock at its peak in the past week.
It’s hard to overstate just how big a deal Half-Life 2 was on release. The massively anticipated game raised the bar for narrative and atmosphere in first-person shooters, and it’s still an impressive feat today. We may still be waiting for the conclusion to the story in Half-Life 3 two decades later, but now is the best time to revisit Half-Life 2 and both its DLC episodes — even if it makes it harder to accept that the trilogy was never completed.
