Tag: Half-Life

Valve’s Yet-To-Be-Announced Multiplayer Game Already Has Thousands Of Players On Steam

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Officially, Valve—the company behind Steam, Half-Life, and more—has yet to announce its next big game. However, thousands of people are currently playing and posting about Deadlock, Valve’s next big game, literally right now. So uh, what’s going on?

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Thanks to leakers and dataminers, we’ve known about a Valve-developed multiplayer game for a few years now. Before it was Deadlock, it was likely codenamed Neon Prime. At one point since it reportedly started development in 2018, the MOBA/character shooter hybrid was possibly going to be set in the Half-Life/Portal universe, but that has seemingly changed based on gameplay leaks that occurred in May. Now, it seems a rumored playtest for Deadlock is currently underway, with the game developing a community of players on Reddit.

As spotted by IGN, over on SteamDB—a third-party website that tracks various stats about Steam games and players—Deadlock’s player count has been steadily increasing over the last few months. In the last few days, the game cracked 18,000 concurrent players. That means it’s one of the top 65 most played games on Steam, and Valve has yet to even tweet about it or release a trailer.

IGN reports that Deadlock’s current early access period is using an invite system, letting players on Steam grant access to other players. It’s understood that Valve is allowing players with early access to talk about the game online with other players, but videos and screenshots still seem to be under a strict NDA. Many are posting about the game and how much they like it on the Deadlockthegame subreddit.

That means we are in a really weird and somewhat unprecedented situation. A new Valve video game is gaining thousands of players on Steam, it’s got an active subreddit, and we’ve even seen videos of the game in action. Deadlock is real. It’s a thing. It’s Valve’s next game. Yet, officially, Valve has yet to announce it or even tease it.

Many players assume that a full-on reveal for Deadlock and an open-access beta are coming sooner rather than later, with many suggesting September. But for now, we have to wait and see when Valve will decide to announce a game that thousands of people are playing and which already has guides and tier rankings. Strange times. Meanwhile, Valve might be working on Half-Life 3 based on some recent leaks. Strange times indeed, folks.

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Zack Zwiezen

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August 12, 2024
Valve Made About A Billion Dollars On Counter-Strike Loot Boxes In 2023

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Image: Valve / Kotaku / Jag_cz (Shutterstock)

According to new data, it appears that Valve likely made about $1 billion from digital Counter-Strike 2 (previously Global Offensive) cases and keys in 2023. Yes, that’s billion with a “B.”

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In Valve’s immensely popular free-to-play tactical FPS Counter-Strike 2, players can get cases by playing and earning them through level drops, or purchase cases from Steam’s community market. These cases come in different variants and can contain extremely rare and valuable cosmetic items like weapon skins. But once you have a case, you don’t just open it. You also need a key, which must be purchased either directly from Steam or from other players on the community market. And because CS2 is very popular, this lootbox system is making Valve a lot of money.

As spotted by Dexerto, third-party website CS2 Case Tracker recently released its 2023 year in review for cases. And the biggest stat is the estimated $980,000,000 that Valve earned from players buying keys to open cases. Because keys are just digital items that unlock cases, it’s not like it costs Valve all that much to make them or maintain them so the company likely absorbed almost all of that staggering figure as profit.

But wait, that massive $980 million stat is only how much money Valve likely made from the sale of keys. It doesn’t factor in the 15% cut they get from every case sold on the community market. When you factor that in, it becomes very likely that Valve made well over $1 billion on cases and keys in 2023 alone.

That probably is one of the reasons Valve isn’t in a rush to make new video games. They don’t really need to. Instead, they can sit back and let Steam and Counter-Strike fund all their virtual reality experiments and other hardware projects. Honestly, it’s a miracle we ever got Half-Life: Alyx.

One last stat for the road: According to CS2 Case Tracker’s data the most popular day to open cases was Wednesday. Why? I don’t know. But there you go. You can now likely win a bar bet with this weird bit of trivia.

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Zack Zwiezen

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January 23, 2024
Death Comes For Us All: Steam No Longer Supports Windows 7

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The fated day has come: If you are still using Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 you might need to upgrade to Windows 10 or 11 soon, as Valve’s massively popular digital storefront, Steam, no longer officially supports those older operating systems.

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Valve first revealed that it would drop support for older Windows versions in a support page posting last March. The message explained that as of January 1, 2024, Steam users on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 will no longer receive new client updates of “any kind,” including security fixes. As a result, Valve is warning users of these operating system to upgrade “sooner than later” to avoid malware and other malicious attacks.

In the post, Valve also explained that Steam Support will no longer offer technical support for issues related to these older versions of Windows. Valve also can’t guarantee that Steam will remain useable on these older OSs moving forward.

However, to be clear, Valve isn’t flipping a switch and killing Steam on Windows 7. It’s just saying that things might start to break soon, and if they do, they won’t get fixed.

“We expect the Steam client and games on these older operating systems to continue running for some time without updates after January 1st, 2024,” Valve wrote. “But we are unable to guarantee continued functionality after that date.”

Why Steam is ending support for Windows 7

Valve says one main reason for it cutting off support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 is due to Google Chrome no longer supporting these older operating systems. That’s a problem for Valve, as Steam relies on an embedded version of the browser. The company behind Half-Life and Portal also mentioned that future versions of the Steam client will “require” Windows features and security updates only found in Windows 10 and 11.

Valve ended its post encouraging players to upgrade to Windows 10 or 11 soon.

“Computers running these [older] operating systems, when connected to the internet, are susceptible to new malware and other exploits which will not be patched,” Valve warned. “That malware can cause your PC, Steam, and games to perform poorly or crash. That malware can also be used to steal the credentials for your Steam account or other services.”

While some folks might now be forced to upgrade or even buy a new PC to keep playing on Steam, it seems reasonable for Valve to move forward and leave behind Windows 7, which was released all the way back in 2009. That’s a hell of a long time when it comes to technology, and Valve supporting that OS for nearly 15 years is impressive.

However, if you do upgrade to Windows 10, get ready to upgrade again soon as Microsoft is winding down security support for that OS in October 2025. As someone holding on desperately to Windows 10, I’m counting the days.

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Zack Zwiezen

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January 3, 2024
The Best Video Game Surprises Of 2023

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Screenshot: Larian Studios

You’d expect a new Bethesda game would be the biggest RPG of the year, but nope. Instead, it was Baldur’s Gate 3, which officially launched earlier this year to rave reviews. We’ve written a lot about the game already on the site and you should check out those posts, too.

What I wanted to talk about here is how incredible it was to see a turn-based, PC-focused, Dungeons & Dragons game developed by an independent studio and released via early access explode like the latest Call of Duty or GTA.

Everyone I knew was playing it. Everyone online was sharing screenshots. Everyone was talking about all the people they were digitally fucking in the game.

It was wild to watch and a reminder successful games don’t always need flashy years-long marketing campaigns featuring big stars and Super Bowl ads. Instead, sometimes, you can just make a really good game that people want and you’ll sell millions of copies. And maybe end up inspiring a lot of erotic fan fiction.

Any big 2023 video game surprises we missed? What unexpected developments got you all excited this year?

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Zack Zwiezen

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December 21, 2023
A Decades-Old Glitch In Half-Life Has Finally Been Fixed
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A new update for Valve’s first game, 1998’s beloved first-person shooter Half-Life, has fixed an old, small, and annoying animation glitch found in one of the game’s most memorable levels. And fans, myself included, are very excited about it.

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The original Half-Life has plenty of memorable moments throughout its campaign. But one of the most famous has to be chapter six, “Blast Pit.” In this level, players are introduced to a big alien tentacle in a still-impressive set piece in which it crashes through a window in a missile silo and drags away a helpless researcher. However, for a very long time now, an animation glitch has made this moment look wonky and broken.

VideoGameCinema / Valve

Last week, Valve released a large 25th-anniversary patch for Half-Life that added in old cut content and new maps, fixed numerous glitches, and even made the game verified on Steam Deck. It was a great patch! However, even after that big update, the Blast Pit animation bug remained. Even after two smaller patches were put out by Valve to fix some minor issues created by the 25th-anniversary update, the Blast Pit bug was still in the game. It taunted players, myself included, who went back to replay the game for the 100th time. A developer who worked on Half-Life even recently commented on the broken animation and joked that it needed to be fixed. And now it finally has after many, many years.

On November 22, Valve released another small patch for Half-Life designed mostly to fix a few more problems the big update introduced. And in the patch notes, I spotted a note that caught my attention:
Fixed timing for the sequence where a tentacle grabs a scientist in Blast Pit.
Could it be? Had Valve finally fixed this tiny error that had lingered for decades at this point? I quickly hopped into Half-Life, loaded up Blast Pit, and watched that helpless scientist get grabbed and pulled away. But this time, he was actually connected to the tentacle and not floating multiple feet in front of it. I might have whispered, “Wow.”

Over on the Half-Life subreddit, players are also celebrating the fixed animation. “Those crazy bastards did it,” one user replied. “That little bug annoyed me so much for some reason, so I unironically consider Half-Life a better game now that it’s finally fixed lol,” posted someone else.

While I’m happy Half-Life is getting so much love from Valve right now in the form of all these updates and fixes, I’m also curious as to why. Sure, it’s the game’s 25th anniversary, so it makes sense to update it.

But things like this make it feel as if a group of devs, or maybe even just one Half-Life superfan within Valve, are on a mission right now, just digging into the game and fixing long-standing bugs. And Valve seems to be okay with it. And you know what, I’m okay with it, too! I salute whoever is responsible for improving Half-Life all these years later.

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Zack Zwiezen

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November 22, 2023
Steam’s Massive Fall Sale Is Offering Up Some Good Deals
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Image: CD Projekt Red / Bethesda / Blizzard / EA / Lucasfilm / Valve / Kotaku
Valve’s annual autumn sale. Some of the best and biggest PC games, including action-RPG Diablo IV, the fantastic Star Wars game Jedi: Survivor, and Bethesda’s latest, Starfield, are all on sale right now.

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This latest fall sale (“autumn,” if you are fancy) runs from November 21 to November 28th. Steam’s autumn sale features a huge list of discounted PC games. Some are older games and others, like Remannt II and Dredge, are hits from 2023.

Here are some of highlights from this massive sale:

Anno 1800 – $15 (75% off)

Black Desert – $1 (90% off)

Blasphemous – $6 (75% off)

Climbey – $6 (40% off)

Cyberpunk 2077 – $30 (50% off)

Darkest Dungeon – $5 (80% off)

Dead By Daylight – $8 (60% off)

Demon Turf – $15 (50% off)

Diablo IV – $42 (40% off)

Dredge – $19 (25% off)

EA F1 23 – $28 (60% off)

El Paso, Elsewhere – $16 (20% off)

En Garde! – $12 (40% off)

Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition – $10 (75% off)

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade – $35 (33% off)

God of War – $30 (40% off)

Hades – $12.50 (50% off)

Half-Life: Alyx – $20 (66% off)

Halo: The Master Chief Collection – $10 (75% off)

Hexcells Complete Pack – $2.69 (70% off)

Hogwarts Legacy – $36 (40% off)

Horizon Zero Dawn – Complete Edition – $12.50 (75% off)

Lies of P – $48 (20% off)

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered – $36 (40% off)

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales – $30 (40% off)

Ninja Saviors, The: Return of the Warriors – $16 (20% off)

Red Dead Redemption 2 – $20 (67% off)

Remnant II – $35 (30% off)

Rust – $27 (33% off)

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – $42 (40% off)

Starfield – $56 (20% off)

Stray – $20 (34% off)

Street Fighter VI – $40 (34% off)

System Shock – $28 (30% off)

Tales From Off-Peak City – $5 (50% off)

Tiny Tiny Wonderlands: Chaotic Great Edition – $20 (75% off)

Warhammer 40k: Boltgun – $15 (32% off)

As always with Steam’s big fall sale, the store’s limited-time blowout kicks off nomination season for the Steam Awards. Players can hop over to the official Steam autumn sale store page and then vote for their favorite games in various categories including Game of the Year, the best Steam Deck game, most innovative gameplay, and so on. Valve will announce the winners in January.

If a game you loved this year got snubbed from the Game Awards, now you can (sort of) right that wrong and nominate it for some Steam awards. These are just as good as the Game Awards, right?

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Zack Zwiezen

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November 21, 2023
Fans Discover Half-Life 2 Corpse Has Actual Dead Human’s Face

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If you’ve played Half-Life 2 or Source engine mods, you’ve likely seen the in-game model “Corpse01.mdl.” The burnt corpse appears multiple times in Half-Life 2’s sewers and other parts of the game, and modders often used it in fan projects. All is well, yes? Well, it was until recently, when fans noticed that the game’s creepy-looking corpse has the face of an actual dead man on it.

Released in 2004, PC shooter Half-Life 2 was the highly anticipated follow-up to Valve’s first game, Half-Life. Upon release, it was widely praised by critics and players. But while it came out to huge acclaim, there was a time when Half-Life 2 wasn’t such a sure bet, as its development process was messy and protracted. Valve scrapped different versions, cut entire sections, and lightened up the game’s intended darker, grittier tone considerably for the final retail release. However, some leftovers of this darker version remain in the final game, including Corpse01.mdl. Playing the game as a kid, the body always looked hyper-realistic and creeped me out whenever I stumbled upon it. Now, we know why.

Valve’s macabre texture-cribbing was discovered completely by accident (h/t The Gamer). About two weeks ago on the r/eyeblech subreddit, someone posted graphic images of dead bodies they claimed were from a medical forensic textbook. (While I’ve personally verified the images posted are real and out there, I won’t be linking to them. A little Googlin’ will lead you to them if you really want to see them.)

In the comments on that post, someone pointed out that one of the images showing a burned corpse looked identical to the Corpse01 model from Half-Life 2. Another post picked up the thread and people quickly began comparing the images to the art in the game. Sure enough, they look identical. The only change appears to be that Valve copied the right eye of the corpse onto the left. That’s it though. The entire face of that model is seemingly a dead dude’s face. Yikes.

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Then, three days ago, gaming YouTuber Richter Overtime uploaded a short and concise video detailing the history of the corpse and its connection to the image, and this seemed to take the story fully mainstream, with folks tweeting about it and sharing it more widely online. As you might expect, a lot of Half-Life fans were freaked out to learn that they have been looking at a real corpse for the past two decades. One modder has already created a new model to replace the old one for folks who feel uncomfortable leaving the original dead face in Half-Life 2.

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Kotaku has reached out to Valve about the corpse to verify its origins and to ask if the company has any plans to change it with a future patch.

Personally, I’m not sure this is a thing that should be in a video game. It seems to me like it might be time to remove this model and replace it with an image of anything but an actual burned human corpse.

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Zack Zwiezen

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December 22, 2022
PC Modders Get Classics Like Half-Life, Max Payne Looking Brand New

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Valve’s classic Portal was recently re-released on Steam with some very fancy new visuals, including ray-tracing and DLSS support. That was great news for Portal fans, but it’s also great news for fans of all kinds of old PC games.

Before we go any further, I’ll explain the tech we’re talking about. RTX is the name given to a set of technologies used by graphics card company Nvidia that uses “ray tracing and AI technologies” to, very simply, make PC games look incredible. Here’s a trailer for Portal With RTX, the re-release of the game made with this tech, showing the improvements made to a game that most of us remember looking very 2007:

Portal with RTX | World Premiere

Now, the thing with RTX is that while in this case (and with Quake and Minecraft) it had to be put into the game by developers, Nvidia are also releasing a version of the tech with modders in mind. It’s called RTX Remix:

With RTX Remix, the game runs in the background and we replace the old rendering APIs and systems with RTX Remix’s 64-bit Vulkan renderer. This enables the addition of ray-tracing to classic games and it all updates in real-time as lights and objects move. Light can be cast from behind the player, or from another room, and in Portal with RTX, light even travels through portals. Glass refracts light, surfaces reflect detail based on their glossiness, reflections can be cast into the scene from behind the player, objects can self-reflect, and indirect light from off-screen illuminates and affects what you see.

Compared to Quake II RTX and Minecraft with RTX, the path-traced ray tracing introduced by RTX Remix is even more advanced, bouncing light four times instead of once, improving quality, immersion, and the simulation of real-world light. Additionally, we’ve also introduced several new ray tracing techniques that further improve quality while also being more performant.

Nvidia says that RTX Remix is “a modding platform” that will allow “modders of all ability levels to bring ray tracing and NVIDIA technologies to classic games”. Given it’s not out until 2023 I was expecting we were still months away from seeing what benefits it could bring to older games, but nope!

Modders like LordVulcan have found you can add RTX to some classic titles, right now, just by…dropping some files from Portal with RTX into another game’s folder on your hard drive and enabling some developer stuff in the console. That’s it. And it’s working on games like SWAT 4 and the original Max Payne.

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While the results aren’t perfect, at least compared to the professional jobs done over months on games like Minecraft, they still look fantastic! Here’s Max Payne, for example, courtesy of Alex Coulter:

That lighting. Those shadows. This is magic.

Here’s some footage of SWAT 4 taken by EiermannTelevision, which was released in 2005 and most definitely did not look like this at the time:

SWAT 4 RTX Remix

And here’s Half-Life 1, along with a little explainer on how it was done:

How To Get RTX in Half-Life: Source ~ RTX 4090 [RTX Remix] [4K]

None of those examples are perfect, but it’s incredible they work this well given how quick their implementation was. This is going to be so good when the actual RTX Remix is released in 2023, but until then it’s going to be cool seeing what other classic titles this slapdash workaround is compatible with!

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Luke Plunkett

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December 12, 2022