Back in 2015, the announcement that Star Wars: Battlefront would launch with skill-based matchmaking instead of a server browser felt newsworthy. Today, a game releasing without custom server support is just business as usual. Gradually, over the last 10 years, the server browser has fallen out of fashion. Battlefield 5 is perhaps the only game I've played this year that offers one, and it's a shadow of what was once a major feature of of the series. With only limited configuration options, it exists simply as lip service to player expectations.

You just need to look at Team Fortress 2's menu to see how much things have changed. Where once the server browser was front-and-centre, now it's buried below a suite of matchmaking options.

Perhaps this sidelining of custom servers was inevitable. After all, it's harder to sell map packs when players can download an endless stream of player-made alternatives. And it's hard to make players care about your persistent progression system if player-run servers can offer decentralised leaderboards. The systems designed to keep players coming back into multiplayer—many of which were popularised in the early 2010s in response to the perceived threat of pre-owned sales of console games—don't work if players have all the control.

That's not to say matchmaking is bad. There are obvious benefits to matching players based on their level of skill. It's easier for new players to get to grips with a game, for one, but also gives those with more experience a more interesting challenge. Stomping newbies may be fun for a while, but it's destructive to the long term health of a game.

Matchmaking also lets developers tailor playlists based on the size of the playerbase. It's a relatively benign way to keep a game feeling populated, even after its initial popularity has waned.

The downside, for me at least, is that matchmaking misses out on a key component of what felt like such an important part of the PC gaming ecosystem throughout the '90s and '00s.

Mod squad

I took an unintended break from PC gaming in the early 2000s, during a period when I could only afford a laptop that threatened to go nuclear if I so much as looked at C&C Generals. When I returned around 2007, I had almost a decade of 3D gaming to catch up on. In doing so, I fell in love with the wild and chaotic world of first-person multiplayer shooters.

I arrived late, but it didn't matter—the party was still raging. The FPS scene was a hotbed of creativity, as modders and mappers filled the most popular games of the day with strange, delightful curios. As someone who'd spent the late-'90s sampling every Tiberian Sun mod I could get my hands on, it was beautiful to see, and it was all made easy thanks to PC gaming's support for custom servers.

The server browser became a shop window into an infinite number of candy stores, promising everything from the mundane—24/7 de_dust—to the sublime. Race maps. Prop hunt. Mario Kart. Instagib. Achievement farming. RP. Laser death cat. A new map, a new mode, a new chance to see something you'd never seen before, and, sometimes, would never see again. Just double-click on a map you'd never heard of before and you'd be transported into a brand new world.

I regularly dipped into a Half-Life 2: Deathmatch server that disabled everything but the Gravity Gun—forcing players to fling toilets, radiators and circular saws at each other. I spent more time than I care to admit playing TF2 in an instant respawn server that featured special power-ups, no time limit, and a set of rules that all-but-insured nobody would ever complete the objective. I once wasted an afternoon in GMod as a watermelon, rolling around a race course with other players. I never found that server again, but I didn't really need to. Ephemeral weirdness was part of the charm.

To be clear, PC gaming isn't any less weird or wonderful in 2019. The chaos is still here, and still just as glorious, but now it's found in Minecraft mini-game servers and through GTA5's FiveM mod. It's found on the front page of Itch.io, or as a standalone project from the makers of some beloved mod. In some respects there's less need than ever for custom servers, because—also this decade—game making tools became more widely available and easier to use. The fact that creators can more easily make their own game rather than relying on blockbuster releases as the base for their creativity is ultimately a net positive.

Curtains up

But if custom server mods where what tempted me into exploring a game, it was the personalities of my favourite servers that kept me coming back. It was the specific map selection, or the perfect combination of settings, or just the atmosphere created by the regulars. It was dropping into a favourite TF2 server and knowing that sometimes everybody in it would be duelling with the Heavy's finger emote—with bans immediately issued to anybody who dared shoot an actual gun.

Player-run servers are a hangout. You join—often mid-way through a match—and play around until you've had enough. The stakes can be as high or as low as the server's culture dictates. You have your regulars, but also a rolling procession of transient visitors that help keep the place feel active—like tourists stopping in at a local pub. And, yes, servers can be toxic or hostile or just generally not worth your time, but it always feels special to discover one that you want to come back to.

Matchmaking, meanwhile, is a performance. You queue up, load in and you're on—playing with unknown people to complete an objective and win the match. If something out of the ordinary happens—if a dance party breaks out in a Destiny 2 survival match—it's almost always because something has already gone wrong (usually half of your team deciding to peace out mid-round).

There are pros and cons to both methods, but I think it's a shame just how completely the pendulum has swung in favour of matchmaking. There are games that experiment with both; that separate out custom servers and matchmaking, much like the current version of Team Fortress 2—which, at its best, is still incredibly weird. And there are still games that fully embrace the spirit of '00s multiplayer shooters, like Warsow or Xonotic—both free and worth checking out. But these feel like the exception rather than the rule, and, inevitably, that's reflected in the number of players populating their servers.

Instead, the very idea of decentralised communities has migrated out of individual games and become broader and more freeform. Maybe I just need to find a good Discord server instead.

Back in 2013 an alpha build of Half-Life called version 0.54, a version first distributed to game journalists in 1997, was released to the public. Its six chapters included one called The Office Warrens, which would eventually evolve into the finished game's fourth chapter. It served as the inspiration for the In Deep mod, which you can try an early version of now.

"In Deep takes you through the scrapped version of Half-Life from 1997," as the description says, "re-imagined and revamped. What awaits you is a surreal, fast-paced, and action-packed journey through the old Labs once again!"

The mod tweaks the alpha version by simplifying some of its more obtuse puzzles and making the combat feel a bit closer to that of the finished game. It's Half-Life as it might have been, if some of its early ideas had been polished rather than scrapped and replaced. You can download it from ModDB.

Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.

While the Half-Life series has a lot of iconic moments, from the lab accident that started it all to learning why we don't go to Ravenholm, none stand out for me as much as leading the resistance to retake City 17 near the end of Half-Life 2.

Gordon's journey does a great job of making you want to get back at the Combine from the very beginning. They're jerks. They hit you with sticks. They make you pick up trash that isn't even yours. Much of the first few hours of the game are spent showing you how bleak and oppressive life has become for humanity since the invasion, with Breen's smug face proclaiming it a paradise. And then you get little glimmers of hope as you're reunited with Barney and start discovering pockets of resistance.

This all culminates when you return to City 17 as the fabled "Anticitizen One", the Combine's most wanted. You've become more than a scientist thrown into extraordinary circumstances at this point, more than a bearded videogame protagonist with a gun. You're an inspirational figure. Alongside you, facing the same daunting odds, are ragtag freedom fighters in weathered jackets and fingerless gloves showing that, for all our faults, we humans refuse to go down fighting when you try to take over our cities with flying knife robots and giant tripod walkers.

As I fought brutally through the streets I felt proud of my resistance comrades. They didn't have plot armor or a gravity gun but they followed me into danger anyway. When I took down a stalker with a rocket launcher, they cheered and surged ahead to press the hard-won advantage. And while at this rate we may never see how the war ends, we won the battle. We at least showed the Combine that Earth doesn't bow to brain bugs without giving them a black eye.

I look forward to bumping into some of these brave men and women around a fire barrel again in the upcoming prequel, even knowing some of them won't survive what's coming. Gordon became a symbol, but they were the real heroes.

Well, OK, that’s not exactly true. Gordon was still the real hero. But they helped!

Valve has been on a bit of an update spree of late: after years of torment, Half-Life 2 NPCs can finally blink again thanks to a recent fix. Now it's Portal 2's turn, and while the improvements and fixes aren't quite as weird, they are probably more useful.

The biggest fix comes in the way of new local cooperative tweaks. It's now easier to have one player on a controller and another on mouse and keyboard, which was previously only possible with a few workarounds. Local coop support is now available from the community coop map queue, too.

Meanwhile, with the newly released Remote Play Together functionality, it's possible to play split-screen Portal 2 with a remote Player 2 who doesn't even own the game. That's not in the patch notes, but it's worth making note of. Portal 2 has online cooperative support, but both people need to own the game.

Here are the full patch notes:

Windows- Fixed an issue where in-game audio caption language would use the system language setting instead of the Steam language setting.Controller support- Improved camera control through Steam Input – the sensitivity scale has changed so you may need to increase your configuration’s sensitivity.- Add local coop support for one controller player and one Mouse/Keyboard player.- Add local coop support from the community coop map queue. Quickplay is still not supported.- Fix XInput related options being hidden when connecting a Steam Input enabled controller using a Gamepad configuration.- Fix the challenge mode screen not having enough footer buttons available through Steam Input.- Fix several more bugs where the incorrect action set could be set in Steam Input.- Fix several cases where having a controller connected but not active would affect the glyphs and settings screen options.

Update 2: It's official, Half-Life: Alyx is happening. Valve's long-awaited "flagship VR game" will be revealed to the world at 10 am PT/1 pm ET on November 21. The tweet comes from a relatively new account—created June 2019—with a small number of followers, and this is actually its first tweet. It's also odd that Valve would make such a big announcement over a channel that so few people were paying attention to. The official Steam Twitter feed, to compare, has 5.2 million followers. 

But it's verified, and the tweet has been retweeted by a few Valve folks, so we're confident it's legit: A new communications channel for a "new" kind of Valve, maybe.

We'll keep you posted. 

Update: According to a new transcript of the leaked interview, Half-Life: Alyx will be shown at The Game Awards on December 12.

Original story: This November 19 will mark the 21st anniversary of the release of the original Half-Life, and according to rumor it will also be when Valve announce a flagship virtual reality game called Half-Life: Alyx.

Valve are rarely interested in celebrating their own game's anniversaries, so take this rumor with a mouthful of salt. The source is apparently the same leaker responsible for the DOTA Underlords leak, and is quoting from an interview between "Geoff" (Geoff Keighley, in his capacity as the creator of the "Final Hours" documentaries about Valve games), Robin Walker (co-developer of Team Fortress 2 among other games), and an unnamed third person.

"March 2020, "Half-Life: Alyx" comin' out", says Geoff in the transcript.

Responding to the question of whether this game would be available for players without VR headsets, "I mean we would love to be delivering a version of this that you could play with a mouse and a keyboard, but like as we said, it began as an exploration of VR," an unnamed person replies.

As for how this entirely hypothetical game would play, the only clue is this statement: "You can see their whole body-- Respond to the situation. You know, panicking, dropping clips on the ground as they fumble their weapons 'cause a zombie's in front of them, all these things, they're just - it's been really fun watching playtests."

Valve have said they'll be releasing a "flagship VR game" this year.

I've reached out to Valve for comment and will update this story if they reply.

Update 2: It's official, Half-Life: Alyx is happening. Valve's long-awaited "flagship VR game" will be revealed to the world at 10 am PT/1 pm ET on November 21. The tweet comes from a relatively new account—created June 2019—with a small number of followers, and this is actually its first tweet. It's also odd that Valve would make such a big announcement over a channel that so few people were paying attention to. The official Steam Twitter feed, to compare, has 5.2 million followers. 

But it's verified, and the tweet has been retweeted by a few Valve folks, so we're confident it's legit: A new communications channel for a "new" kind of Valve, maybe.

We'll keep you posted. 

Update: According to a new transcript of the leaked interview, Half-Life: Alyx will be shown at The Game Awards on December 12.

Original story: This November 19 will mark the 21st anniversary of the release of the original Half-Life, and according to rumor it will also be when Valve announce a flagship virtual reality game called Half-Life: Alyx.

Valve are rarely interested in celebrating their own game's anniversaries, so take this rumor with a mouthful of salt. The source is apparently the same leaker responsible for the DOTA Underlords leak, and is quoting from an interview between "Geoff" (Geoff Keighley, in his capacity as the creator of the "Final Hours" documentaries about Valve games), Robin Walker (co-developer of Team Fortress 2 among other games), and an unnamed third person.

"March 2020, "Half-Life: Alyx" comin' out", says Geoff in the transcript.

Responding to the question of whether this game would be available for players without VR headsets, "I mean we would love to be delivering a version of this that you could play with a mouse and a keyboard, but like as we said, it began as an exploration of VR," an unnamed person replies.

As for how this entirely hypothetical game would play, the only clue is this statement: "You can see their whole body-- Respond to the situation. You know, panicking, dropping clips on the ground as they fumble their weapons 'cause a zombie's in front of them, all these things, they're just - it's been really fun watching playtests."

Valve have said they'll be releasing a "flagship VR game" this year.

I've reached out to Valve for comment and will update this story if they reply.

Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.

Each of the special infected in Left 4 Dead has its own musical tell. The hunter's is a tripping plink-plonk-plink, the spitter's got an eerie four notes versus the smoker's simple two, while the tank rolls up with its own miniature symphony. Play for long enough and you'll learn them all, but it's probably the witch you memorize first. Her musical sting is high-pitched and insistent, the first melody quickly joined by a second to create a sense of escalation. Even before you hear her sobbing, that tune plays and you know it's time to turn off the flashlight and step carefully.

Not startling her should be easy, but then the director plants her somewhere unavoidable, or your friend turns a corner a little too fast, or a stray bullet or pipe bomb catches her and that's it. She goes from sobbing to screaming and beelines for the survivor who startled her, fingerknives out as she knocks them down. She's not the kind of threat who'll take out a whole party, and eventually you learn to deal with her, but the terror of that shrieking attack is hard to get used to.

When you stumble across zombies in Left 4 Dead they're often just doing their own thing, leaning against walls looking sad. Until you bumble up waving your guns and one-liners around they just want to be left alone with their misery. The witch is the most miserable of the miserable, a goth queen whose sobbing is a warning to just let her be. Left 4 Dead calls them Infected rather than zombies which rehumanizes them a little, and the witch is the most human of all, the one who seems most aware of the tragedy of her situation.

The other special infected are designed to split the party. They lure or drag you away, they separate you with lakes of acid, they throw you around. The witch has a uniting effect, forcing everyone to huddle together on the far side of a room trying to pass without incident in total silence.

Left 4 Dead is a chatty game, one where the characters are jokey and everyone has to communicate when they need healing or are low on ammo. The fact the witch can make everyone shush and get serious, whispering into their mics when she's around as if she can hear them over the internet, is honestly a miracle.

If you think the tank is scarier just because it has more hit points I don't even know what to say to you, man.

It's Half-Life 2's 15th Birthday today! On November 16th, 2004 Valve released one of PC Gaming’s most celebrated games, the hotly-anticipated Half-Life 2 would go on to become the foundation of a generation of games and famous mods. The continued adventures of Gordon Freeman were a hallmark First-Person Shooter with a physics-based engine that encouraged you to play with the world around you. (It also launched the pale lighting and muddy tones aesthetic that defined that era of games.) Without Half-Life 2 and its Source Engine, we wouldn’t have a lot of landmark games: Team Fortress 2, Portal, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, and Insurgency, to name a few.

Half-Life 2 also heralded the launch of Steam’s new look and new role as a storefront for Valve’s games. No longer just a service for multiplayer and updates, Steam has since grown into the primary platform for PC Gamers around the world and an industry juggernaut. To many, the success of Steam has wholly eclipsed the Valve games that launched it.

Half-Life 2 has not dimmed in popularity, though. If you’re looking to get back into it, can I recommend the popular combat enhancement Half-Life 2: MMod? It’s quite good and just updated last month. There’s also long-thought-dead mod Logistique, which re-emerged this year after eight years in torpor and updated just yesterday.

Two quick notes: While it cannot consume alcohol at all, I would like to say that in theory Half-Life 2 can legally purchase and consume alcohol in the Central African Republic. That said, it should be ready to vote and smoke in time for the 2024 United States Federal Election.

On a personal note, I can still remember anxiously pre-ordering the collector’s edition of HL2 months before it released. The Source Engine tech demos and trailers were impressive, but at the time there really was no knowing whether the game would be everything it promised to be: Both cutting edge and easily modded, both innovative and traditional. It’s fascinating to look back now and see the game that inspired a generation of PC gamers and game developers turn 15.

🥳🎂🎈🎉!

It's been longer than you think since Left 4 Dead 2 came out, and if you don't believe me, chew on this: Ten years have passed since Coach, Nick, Rochelle, and Ellis first blazed their way across the Infected wasteland. That's right, a full-on decade—you didn't see that coming, did you? I can barely believe it myself.

Sadly, despite all that time gone by there's still no sign out of Valve that Left 4 Dead 3 is something that will ever actually happen. But it seems like something is happening—in that other first-person zombie game, Dying Light.

Techland actually hinted at this a couple of days ago in a tweet following the end of the Dying Light: Deadeye's Promise event, saying, "We don't want you to be left 4 dead waiting for results!" That got some attention, but a lot of respondents seemed to think it was just a throwaway gag or pre-Halloween reference. Apparently not.

For now, Techland hasn't said anything more about it, and so it falls to us to speculate. It could be (and, I will commit further, probably is) something as simple as Left 4 Dead 2 character skins or cosmetics coming to Dying Light, which the studio continues to actively support despite the fact that it's nearly five years old. But Dying Light 2 is expected to arrive in spring 2020, and so with a little stretching and squinting it's possible to see hope for something more in-depth, especially with Left 4 Dead 2's big 10th anniversary coming in November. (Ten years! Where does the time go?)

I've reached out to Techland and Valve for more information. We'll let you know what happens.

I used to reinstall Team Fortress 2 every year for Halloween, dressing up in seasonal cosmetics to fight giant enemies like the Horseless Headless Horsemann, Monoculus, and Merasmus, or to just drive around in karts. Those events continue, and Scream Fortress 11 is live right now. As is the case in recent years it's more of a showcase for player-made creations, with two community maps and a host of community-created cosmetics.

Those maps are a king of the hill map called Laughter, and a payload map called Precipice. The cosmetics are bundled in a collection called Spooky Spoils which includes a bird head for the Engineer, a shark head for the Pyro, and a two-piece velociraptor costume for the Scout. The Soul Gargoyle from previous years returns as well.

Scream Fortress 11 continues through November 7, and you can find Halloween matches to join under the Special Events category of the Casual section.