Valve Updates ‘Half-Life’ on 25th Anniversary, Grab It for Free for a Limited Time [Video]

With Half-Life turning 25 today, Valve has dropped a little something special in the form of a major update for the classic FPS. Touted as “the definitive version” of Half-Life, this 25th Anniversary Update adds a whack of goodies, including widescreen support, Steam Deck support, updated graphics settings and more. Not only that, but if you haven’t already, you can grab Half-Life for free on Steam for a limited time!

Alongside graphical updates, lighting fixes and controller support, the 25th Anniversary Update includes added content from Half-Life: Uplink (the 1998 demo of Half-Life), as well as four new multiplayer maps. Valve has also restored some content for “the true nostalgia-seekers”, which includes the original main menu artwork, along with some early prototype player models from the alpha builds of the game.

Still not enough? Valve also got the original development team together for a 25th anniversary retrospective, which you can see below.

Valve has also archived the “Pre-25th Anniversary Build” of Half-Life to a publicly visible Beta branch named “steam_legacy”, just in case you decide to delve into the game prior to this new definitive version.

And as mentioned, for the rest of the weekend, you can grab Half-Life for free to keep. It’s just the base game, so the Opposing Force and Blue Shift expansions aren’t included. Those, however, alongside several other entries in the series, are heavily discounted until November 21, so get moving!