Update: And now it's official: The full Half-Life Collection is, for awhile at least, free to play. "Half-Life: Alyx is coming in March, and we are celebrating early by making all games in the Half-Life Collection FREE to play for Steam users, from now until the day it launches," Valve said in announcement.

"Half-Life: Alyx is set before the events of Half-Life 2 and the episodes, but the games share characters and story elements. The Half-Life: Alyx team believes that the best way to enjoy the new game is to play through the old ones, especially Half-Life 2 and the episodes, so we want to make that as easy as possible."

The Half-Life Collection includes Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, and Half-Life 2: Episode Two, as well as the spin-off games Opposing Force and Blue Shift, and the multiplayer Team Fortress Classic.

Original story:

Some Steam users received a notification yesterday that advertised a Half-Life: Alyx event before vanishing. The notification claimed that the Half-Life Collection would be free until the launch of the VR spin-off, except there is no such thing as the Half-Life Collection, and right now all the Half-Life games have prices. 

While there are no bundles known as the Half-Life Collection, there's The Orange Box and the Half-Life Complete bundles, but neither of them are free. And despite the notification, which links to an error page, Valve hasn't made any announcements. 

It looks like the notification was sent out too early, but that doesn't explain why the bundle has a different name. It could simply be a mistake, so the notification could just be referring to Half-Life Complete. It could also be that Valve's going to release a third bundle, which will eventually contain Half-Life: Alyx. 

I've reached out to Valve to find out more about the event, so keep an eye out for updates. 

The klaxons sounded earlier today when HTC China president Alvin Wang Graylin shared a few slides from his recent talk on the future of VR, including one that said, "Valve HL Alyx/LFD3 will drive consumer and AAA studio interest." The acronym isn't quite right, but the reference to Left 4 Dead 3 was obvious.

There was an initial jolt of excitement—surely a highly-placed executive at HTC would have an inside track on this kind of thing, right?—but it was all very thin and out-of-nowhere, and people quickly began to theorize that Graylin's source was actually the highly-speculative Valve News Network site, a theory bolstered by this tweet from December 2019.

It seemed weird to me that an HTC president would go out on a limb like that based solely on a VNN report, but some of his other bullet points were pretty pie-in-the-sky too: "AR/VR connected 24/7 to AI Cloud will make humans super intelligent," for instance, or "Elderly will use VR to re-enter work force and travel the world." 

However accurate or inaccurate those predictions prove to be, we can say for sure that the one about Left 4 Dead 3 is way off the mark.

"We’ve seen rumors to this effect for the last couple of months. We did briefly explore some Left 4 Dead next opportunities a few years ago. But we are absolutely not working on anything L4D related now, and haven’t for years," Valve said in a statement sent to IGN. 

"It’s clear some people are having fun creating misinformation to spin up the community and other outlets. Unfortunately, for now a new L4D game is not something we’re working on."

Sorry, everyone. But if leaks and rumors are your thing, we've got a roundup of all the Left 4 Dead 3 scuttlebutt we've run across over the years that you can dive into right here.

Shortly after the release of the famed Orange Box, Valve embarked upon a series of "Directed Design Experiments" that Gabe Newell hoped would spark a new wave of creativity at the studio. One of them, as explained by the Half-Life Wiki, was called F-Stop, and it was enough of an internal hit that it was tapped for full development as a prequel to Portal. For reasons unknown, that prequel never came to be, and the whole thing sunk into obscurity—another Valve mystery, to be occasionally whispered about in Reddit threads.

One of the reasons so little is known about F-Stop is that Valve simply refused to talk about it, apparently out of hope that it would actually turn it into a proper game someday [Half-Life: Alyx stares directly into the camera]. Valve seems to have had a recent change of heart, however, as an upcoming YouTube series called Exposure, being made by indie studio LunchHouse Software, will not just explain how F-Stop was intended to work, but actually show it in action.

"The mechanics are not based on speculation or hearsay. Instead, Exposure uses the original, official code from Valve's own F-STOP, or as it was properly named, Aperture Camera," the video description states. It also notes that Valve has given the studio "explicit permission to continue with our project using their original code."

The "gameplay" in the clip bears more than a passing resemblance to Superliminal, a perception-bending first-person puzzler released in November—a similarity that didn't go unnoticed on Twitter. That may be why Valve is suddenly willing to let this cat out of the bag: There's not much point in keeping your special mechanic a secret if someone else has already turned it into a game, after all. 

And while an unused game mechanic might seem like a thin basis for a multipart video series, LunchHouse's Tristan Halcomb told USgamer that there's enough to it to make more than a dozen videos, although they're aiming to keep it to five or six.

A full release schedule hasn't been set yet: Halcomb said LunchHouse wants to "discuss the future of the project a bit more with Valve to see what opportunities we may have going forward before committing to a follow up, so we're working based on their schedule to some extent." For now, you can follow along with the project at exposure.lunchhouse.software.

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.