It’s the big 20th birthday of one of Valve’s best games and the one that started off Steam’s lifetime. The franchise wanted to shake things up in the FPS market and succeeded as it became a success. So now Valve is celebrating the day 20 years on with the Half-Life 2 anniversary and letting you grab the Half-Life 2 for free.

As of this writing, you have just over a day left to do so, as it ends at 10 a.m. Pacific on November 18th (6 p.m. GMT). But it’s not just the sequel that gets the spotlight, as the whole franchise gets a discount across the board, including the first game that’s only $0.99/£0/79 or the VR game Half-Life: ALyx for $20.39/£16.99. So, if you haven’t yet played the staple of a game, now is a good time to do so. You can also try to win a custom Half-Life 2 RTX 4080 Super from Nvidia during this time.

Half-Life 2 documentary

The games are rather popular and successful, as Half-Life 2 has an overwhelmingly positive score on Steam overall and recently. According to SteamDB, it just reached a new peak in player count, with over 52,000 people enjoying the freebie at the same time as the massive update that came out alongside.

Valve also released a documentary for the birthday, giving insight into how the game’s development panned. The documentary also discussed all the problems they ran into being such a smaller developer at the time, something that might not be even thinkable from the giant it has become to this day.

With the Half-Life 2 team back together, they went through many perils to get this game out, including nearly going bankrupt, getting hacked, getting sued, and the start of Steam itself. This is a good two-hour video to watch while getting into Half-Life itself.

About the Author

Sebastian Kozlowski

With a fascination for technology and games, Seb is a tech writer with a focus on hardware and deals. He is also the primary tester and reviewer at BGFG and PCGuide.