We're digging into the PC Gamer magazine archives to publish pieces from years gone by. This article was originally published in 2005. For more quality articles about all things PC gaming, you can subscribe now in the UK and the US.   

When Tim was on his super-secret Seattle mission to trick Valve into spilling on Aftermath (PCG 148), the most exciting thing he sent back to Gamer HQ—for me—wasn’t about that. It was a photo of a T-shirt, with no text and a simple white icon. A man, getting hit in the back of the head by a toilet. We are a cult, we Gravity Gunners, and this is our sign.

The smart money wasn’t on Half-Life 2 Deathmatch as the ‘surprise for the community’ Valve teasingly announced a week before its release. It was bound to be a CS:S map or a new terrorist skin. Then, on the day, everyone restarted their Steam clients and got a picture. It was of a woman, firing a toilet at a Combine guard with the Gravity Gun. We grinned.

Our previously private Gravity Gunning habits were suddenly revealed  to each other. There were sink fanatics. Filing cabinets were popular. The CRT monitor has a particular resonance with some gamers. The gamblers liked the explosive barrels—suicide if the enemy shoots it, but the splash damage means you barely need to aim. Me, I was a radiator man. It’s the biggest thing that’ll fit through a door, making it the ultimate compromise between mobility and power. It even serves as a bullet-shield one way round, and allows excellent visibility the other. And it’s heavy. Really, really heavy. The radiator doesn’t care if you’ve got full health and 200 armour—no bone goes unbroken, no victim survives.

Soon I had become a Gravity Gun connoisseur. The Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator is an elegant weapon for a more civilised age—not as clumsy or as random as the SMGs the unrefined masses favour. Most of my scores came from sweeping these crude gunmen up with large tables, fences and trolleys—killing three or four at a  time, deflecting their slugs with a door or catching their grenades and Combine Energy Balls with ease and tossing them back with distaste. But now and then, I’d run into a fellow Gravity Gunner. Our eyes would meet over our filing cabinets, and there would be a moment’s respectful pause as we took note of the crushed corpses we’d each created, perhaps recognising each other’s names from the scoreboard. Then, we’d fire.

There are three gravity duel situations: both combatants armed, one armed, or neither armed. The best battles start with the first and degenerate through each stage, and the best of these I ever had was with a fellow radiator man. Our identical projectiles collided in mid-air with sparks and a clang, both perfect first-shots, both spinning off at right angles. We switched—I grabbed his central heating unit, he mine—and flung again. One radiator ricocheted up and  landed on a balcony above, and we both turned to the other, lying on the ground between us.

The secret handshake of Gravity Gunners.

We dived for it, both holding the grab trigger of our weapons. It jumped into the air and hovered between us. Our eyes locked over its grill, neither of us sure who had it. He suddenly jumped back—he thought it was me, and wanted room to catch it. But the radiator went back with him, and after a moment’s confusion he fired. I caught it, of course—he’d given me the room for that himself. I aimed low and fired. He strafe-jumped, twisted and caught it as it bounced past. It came back at me at head-height, but I was ready for it. With each fling, though, I could feel the catch getting harder, the shots more cunning.

This is the move we use to put down Gravity Gun tourists—machinegun deathmatchers who fancy a dip into the world of object-flinging for a break. We scoff at their obvious shots, seemingly aimed into the very jaws of our own weapon. Their poor choice of object is immediately rejected and returned violently to sender, catching them off-guard and probably putting them off Gravity Gunning for some time. To return a return—playing object tennis—is like the secret handshake of the serious Gravity Gunners.

But a practised throw is harder to stop—if it comes too low or too high, it’ll end up travelling laterally across your view as you track it, requiring extraordinary reactions to pinpoint and grab it. Some shots I just had to dodge, spinning one-eighty and catching it on the rebound—and leaving my back momentarily open to anything else he might find to fling. But my shots were causing him problems too, and soon I had him in a corner, just a few metres away, and used a low shot. It was too close to catch, but incredibly he jumped and landed on it as it rattled to a stop beneath him. I went to snatch it back for another throw, but it wouldn’t budge. I looked up at him. He looked back at me, then jumped. Seizing my chance, I tried to grab the radiator. It flew towards me, but stopped further away than I expected. As I looked up, I realised what had happened. He didn’t pause this time—those toasty-warm ridges slammed into me and crushed me against the wall. I gaped appreciatively. This man was an artist.

Half-Life 2 Deathmatch is the only one of the three games you get when you buy Half-Life 2 that doesn’t gleam with polish. On a bad connection, or a bad server, the lag becomes a nightmare rather than a mere handicap—objects stutter, hover, go through things, disappear. But really, given the amount of network traffic involved in synchronising that many complex physics reactions for 20 odd players, it’s a miracle it works at all. And perfect though Counter-Strike: Source feels, when a bullet from a better player cracks my head and kills me, my reaction is frustration, outrage and expletives. When a better player kills me in HL2DM, I’m left with only breathless admiration.

If you want to imagine the future of deathmatch, imagine a toilet, hitting a human head, forever.

In its quieter moments, the cellblock is almost soothing. Its striking chequered floors, incongruous Escher-like architecture, and concrete walls adorned with chipped paintwork and bullet holes lend the space an unlikely degree of charm. Besides the light echo of peripheral footfall and HEV suit-charging it's eerily quiet. That is, until the Rebels step out against the Combine: barrel-chested, leather-skinned and bloodthirsty—an inevitable eruption of gunfire, pulse orbs and exploding frag grenades follows.  

Since its arrival two weeks after Half-Life 2's mid-November 2004 launch, Lockdown has been one of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch's most popular 2v2 maps. Top players have came and went since, however TheRealQuAz and Maxtasy are long-serving veterans who've occupied its online multiplayer wargrounds since 2008. 

Observing in god-like spectator mode, I look on in awe as these experts exchange blows with two lesser players; dancing around the map and executing fatal maneuvers with a level of precision that's owed to years of experience. Each dash, bunnyhop and meticulously-placed gravity gun-fired grenade is measured and is the result of refined strategy—it seems fitting the monochrome floor mirrors that of a chess board. Within mere minutes the commanding duo is fifteen points to the good. 

"That was just a casual match," Quaz tells me afterwards. "The start was slow, but picked up toward the end when I got warmer."

Nowadays, casual matches are as good as it gets for HL2DM's most serious devotees. Of the 300 or so active daily players, around half are preoccupied with the game's Roleplay mode—a temperamental server which while hosting a huge map that lets players work, rent houses, commit crimes, and go to prison, isn't nearly as sophisticated—nor as fun—as it may sound. 

"You have a bank account and earn money just for being on the server, and you can buy items with that money," explains Maxtasy. "A lot of people just stay idle on the server to farm cash. That's why these servers are usually at the top of the server browser and new players to the game usually join the most populated servers and get a weird first impression of the game, sadly."

Of the remaining 150 or so folk who tend towards the game's default modes, the chances of finding players fit to challenge the likes of Maxtasy and TheRealQuaz are few and far between. Of course this wasn't always the case. 

In 2006, two years after the multiplayer's inception, HL2DM was a regular in Steam's top ten most played games, pulling in upwards of 20,000 players per day. For competitive players, Clans United was established as the game's central European community website and over a six year period hosted 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 leagues which, at its peak, spanned five divisions with eight teams in each field. A hefty waiting list was perpetually on standby, whereby new teams would only replace outfits relegated from the lowest leagues. 

The community always had some drama or scandal going on, whether it be cheating accusations, admin abuse or mismanagement.

At the same time, less significant forums such as HL2DM University were chartered, and a US ESL community ran a semi-successful 1v1 ladder. After players failed to shift Serino—no longer active but widely considered one of the best HL2DM players of all time—from the top spot after several months, though, the latter was eventually dissolved and absorbed by Clans United.         

"Division one had some of the most skilled teams and players ever seen in the game," says Quaz. "It's strange to me that HL2DM was overlooked by the wider community considering the elite level of the top pros is so impressive to watch. But although host to some of the greatest matches ever played, the league and community always had some drama or scandal going on, whether it be cheating accusations, admin abuse or mismanagement." 

In September 2010 Valve upgraded HL2DM to utilise the Orange Box version of the Source Engine—a move which disabled a well-used crouch bug that in turn vastly altered the game's bunny hop mechanic. For many players this meant relearning the game from scratch and compromised six years-worth of practice. As such, a number of teams withdrew from competitive play and by 2012 just two divisions remained. 

It was then Quaz formed his first clan with two similarly prolific players of the time, Lancelot and Bangelo, who went on to win their debut season outright without dropping a single map. Normal procedure dictated that the top team would thereafter progress to the next league—in this case from division four into division three—however a coinciding league restructure levied by the game's admins saw the introduction of a new lower division, and thus saw Quaz and his team were forced to stay put. This didn't sit well with Bangelo and after several formal protests fell on deaf ears he quit the competitive scene entirely, causing Quaz and Lancelot to carry on in a separate 2v2 league. 

In late 2012, Quaz gained admin rights to one of the remaining divisions, yet he himself was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the community due to several ongoing spats regarding team allegiance and admin disputes. Quaz describes the HL2DM scene as "stagnant" around this time and, having shared the gossip with Bangelo, passed over his admin details to allow his ex-teammate to browse the acrimony for himself. 

"I gave the admin forum password to my teammate Bangelo with no malicious intent, just so he could have a chance to troll around on the private admin forums," Quaz explains. "Somehow he managed to delete the entire database of the site, much of which had not been backed up. Only an incomplete series of hall of fame pictures survived. This is pretty much how Clans United went down. I guess I owe it to the community to tell the whole story as they deserve to know and might not already."

From the outside looking in, it's difficult to view Bangelo's actions as anything but intentional. "To be honest, I don't remember all the details," Quaz adds. "I'm not sure exactly what happened internally but it had mixed reactions from the community—some people were obviously annoyed, including me, that much of the history of the game was lost. Others praised Bangelo for deleting Clans United as many players resented the management and felt its time had finally come. People just didn't care as much, despite Clans United being a cornerstone of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch for many great years, which is how it should be remembered." 

In the wake of Clans United, the Old School Community was formed in 2013 which aimed to replicate and replace its predecessor. It's still live today however the same level of interest has never been achieved, and the OSC in its most modern guise instead caters for whichever 'top' players can be bothered stopping by. With other Valve franchises still hugely popular—not least Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2—one might wonder why HL2DM has failed to garner the same long-term support. 

Maxtasy describes his multiplayer of choice as "Valve's forgotten child", while Quaz points to the perceived steep learning curve of hitting top rank in HL2DM coupled with the advent of esports as possible reasons it got left behind—this and the fact Valve makes a killing from CS:GO's skin economy.  

But I of course cross my fingers and hope for the best. My dream would really be a HL3DM game with huge support and a competitive aspect.

While both players have tried to invest time in the likes of Counter-Strike and TF2, unique weapons such as the Gravity Gun and how it's used in combat—"small nuances like lobbing frag grenades and catching them with the Gravity Gun can take years to master," says Maxtasy—combined with its skill-based movement and fast-action rounds have continually drawn them back to HL2DM. 

So how does the HL2DM community move forward—can it? In light of Gabe Newell's Reddit Ask Me Anything last week, could the possibility of Half-Life 3 mark the return of Deathmatch? After all, the original Half-Life shipped with its own iteration of the Deathmatch multiplayer—perhaps a third series instalment of Gordon Freeman's otherworldly adventures is what this community needs to get it back on track.

"It looks to me that Valve is indeed working on a new game in the Half-Life or Portal franchise, but also I got the feeling their new game will be highly influenced by new technologies like Virtual Reality," says Maxtasy. "I fear the new game will be in VR, but I also doubt this will bring a new Deathmatch game. [Valve] already have their 'cash-cow multiplayer games' such as Dota 2 in the strategy genre, and CSGO in their FPS genre. But I of course cross my fingers and hope for the best. My dream would really be a HL3DM game with huge support and a competitive aspect."

Although slightly more confident, Quaz echoes a similar sentiment: "We will see it some day sooner or later I am sure, whether or not it will be called HL3DM is up in the air. However, I feel (and I hope I'm wrong) that it will be nothing like HL2DM. Considering the direction that FPS games in esports are going right now, it won't be anything like the classic arena shooter with skill-based movement. I hope I am very wrong and valve are saving HL3DM to be the revival of the arena shooter. But that may be wishful thinking from me."

In its current state, Quaz reckons the HL2DM community is done for. New players can never hope to reach high levels as there aren't enough top players to learn from. "The best thing in my view would be for Valve to create a brand new multiplayer FPS with a similar mechanic and aesthetic as HL2DM. Essentially a HL2DM reboot with a better competitive engine. I know that this would open up a world of unimagined possibilities. Whether they would be interested in that is anyone's guess. I would love to be involved if there ever was something of that sort."

Like the demise of any community, it's sad to see something once so active fade. But with Half-Life 2: Deathmatch it seems so many variables have worked against it for some time. It's trapped by the advent and ever-growing popularity of esports, and trapped by the Half-Life brand itself and the fact Half-Life 3 might never happen. It's almost ironic that HL2DM's most iconic map is set in a prison. Its most skilled players continue to battle on its dimly-lit concourse, every twitch trick-shot a callback to the game's energetic heday.

Have you played every single game in your Steam library? No? Neither have I and that accomplishment is apparently just a small sand grain in the over 288 million games in Steam collections that have never felt a press of the Play button. That's a surprising figure from a new report by Ars Technica researching the most active and popular games on Steam straight from the recorded statistics of some of the platform's 75-million-strong community.

Ars' method for its number flood involves sampling registered games and their played hours via profiles and their unique Steam IDs. With the help of a server for computational muscle, Ars randomly polled more than 100,000 profiles daily for two months to pull together an idea of which games see the most time on everyone's monitors. In other words, your Backlog of Shame (don't deny it, everyone has one) probably took part in some SCIENCE at some point. Exciting.

Some caveats exist, though. The data Ars looked at for its research only extends back to 2009, when Steam brought in its "hours played" tracking system. Owned and played/unplayed games are thus slightly skewed to not account for older releases from the early noughties, and any length of time spent in offline mode wouldn't get picked up by Steam either. Still, Ars claims its results deliver a good picture of Steam gaming trends for the past five years albeit with some imperfections.

Predictably, Valve's personal products stack high on the list in terms of ownership and most played hours. Dota 2 takes the crown with an estimated 26 million players who ganked faces at some point in the MOBA, but free-to-play FPS Team Fortress 2 follows closely behind with a little over 20 million users. Counter-Strike: Source rounds out the top three with nearly 9 million players, but it's also collecting dust in over 3 million libraries.

As for non-Valve games, Skyrim wins in activity, barely edging out Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with 5.7 million estimated active owners. Civilization V kept 5.4 million players hooked for Just One More Turn, and Garry's Mod boasts 4.6 million budding physics artists.

Want to know what the most unplayed Steam game is? It's Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, the Source tech demo given free to pretty much everyone on Steam who bought or fired up Half-Life 2. It hasn't been touched by an approximate 10.7 million players. I guess that old fisherman is feeling pretty lonely right now.

My favorite stat is the total of played hours divided by game mode, more specifically the separate multiplayer clients of the Steam versions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops. The single-player campaigns for each respective title sits modestly within the mid-20-hour range, but the multiplayer side balloons well into the hundreds of hours. It's a pretty obvious indicator of where the biggest chunk of popularity resides in FPS gaming, but it's not like you wouldn't get weird looks for claiming you play Call of Duty for the story anyway.

See more of Ars' results in both number and pretty orange graph form in its report.

I've not much sympathy for "things were better in the old days" reminiscing. For instance, those who prefer the twitch action of 'old-school' shooters still have valid options for their acrobatic rocket-spam. Far better then, are those retro-pastiche projects that filter the philosophy of nostalgia through something entirely more ridiculous. Take Half-Life 2: Deathmatch mod Jaykin' Bacon 3. As you'll see in this trailer, its Instagib mode will let you play a flying Solid Snake shooting his deadly electrified finger gun.



There's no hint of a release date yet for the Jaykin' Bacon Source sequel, so while we wait for the mod team to provide further instructions, you can check out their official site. Alternatively, head over to ModDB to see how the creators have incorporated Perfect Dark Zero into their mythology.

Whenever you download and install a game on Steam, the files rest neatly on your hard drive like a well-pressed stack of laundry for quick access and organization of custom mod files. Some older Source games creak along on an older format from an earlier age in Steam's saga, but in a new FAQ, Valve says it's converting the guts of these games to use the SteamPipe content delivery system for faster load times and an updated file layout.

Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, and Team Fortress 2 will soon traverse over to the steamapps/common section of your Steam folder instead of the older steamapps/ destination. The conversion is automatic: Valve says you'll need enough disk space "for about two full copies of the game" as it changes over.

Modders and mod users have a little bit of extra homework to do to ensure everything works. Custom files will need to be copied manually over to the new directory, and mod authors should start packaging their works as VPK files instead of in a ZIP.

ZIP files still work in a pinch, as Valve describes it:

"For example, if the ZIP contains custom player models that look like (heaven forbid) ponies, and one of the files is materials/models/player/scout/scout_head.vtf, then you might make a dirctory such as tf/addons/i_love_ponies. You should unzip the mod such that the custom scout head texture ends up at tf/addons/i_love_ponies/materials/models/player/scout/scout_head.vtf."

Check out the rest of Valve's FAQ for more detailed info on the changes SteamPipe brings. You can also download and join the ongoing Team Fortress 2 beta to see the updates for yourself.

The Half-Life 2 Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator Replica will go on sale in April, but they're going to be pretty tough to get hold of. Joystiq have noticed a sales page on Think Geek offering NECA's 1:1 model for $150. There will only be 5000 sold worldwide. Once they sell out, "they're gone forever!" The two foot gun features "orange LEDs, 2 handles, 2 triggers, 4 unique sounds from the game." You'll find a list of pre-order links here on the NECA pre-order page.

I think I prefer their Portal gun, but sadly that's flown out of stock. All that's left is a little note saying that the entire batch went in less than half an hour. There's more merch on the NECA site, and you can get a closer look at the Gravity Gun replica in this photograph right here.

Even though Lego Lord of the Rings has been announced, we reckon they’re fast running out of franchises to render in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. Lego James Bond is the one we always mention when we see the Traveller’s Tales guys, but so far we’ve had no luck convincing them that squashing a plastic version of Sean Bean with a giant satellite array would be a very good thing.

Flickr user Catsy has completely inspired us to believe that a Lego version of Half-Life would be the way for Lego to go. As Kotaku reported, he/she has created a Lego version of Gordon Freeman using stock Lego bits and bobs, equipped with a customised Overwatch Standard Issue Pulse Rifle made from a Lego tommy gun.

As Catsy notes, Freeman needs a little more smoothing and painting. But between his/her and Orrange Stahl’s attempts at Lego Half-Life, we think there’s more than enough to convince the Danish toy giants to create Lego versions of Freeman, Alyx Vance, The G-Man et al. Who knows, maybe they could even make a game of it.