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Elon Musk considered calling OpenAI 'Freeman' because of the bonkers rationale that the Half-Life protagonist represented 'what we are essentially trying to achieve'

by Rich Stanton

The ongoing legal fight between OpenAI co-founders Elon Musk and Sam Altman has seen the release of a treasure-trove of internal documentation from the firm's earliest years. One minor theme has been the presence of Gabe Newell, who gave the company over $20 million and was the sole member of its "informal advisory board" in 2018: he later personally emailed Musk to try and get Hideo Kojima a tour of SpaceX... Read more.

You can finally rescue Half-Life's guards and scientists thanks to this mod inspired by Lemmings

by Rick Lane

It always bugged me that you couldn't save the scientists in Half-Life. You'd be trundling through some grey corridor in the bowels of Black Mesa, with one or two or maybe even three lab coat wearing boffins behind you, when they'd suddenly stop for no obvious reason, announcing: "This is as far as I go!" You may not have noticed, Poindexter, but there's an alien invasion happening, and sticking around because those legs you don't use much are getting tired is probably not a good idea... Read more.

22 years later, this classic Half-Life zombie survival mod shambles onto Steam with all new features

by Rick Lane

Before Valve reinvented cooperative gaming with Left 4 Dead, there was Zombie Panic! A mod for the original Half-Life, Zombie Panic! pitted groups of players against a single, player-controlled brain-muncher. Which doesn't sound all that challenging, except that any survivors killed by the zombie would rise again as zombies themselves, slowly turning the tide against survivors until there was only one sorry human remaining... Read more.

Beloved Half-Life zombie mod finally comes to Steam 22 years after it debuted

by editor@pcgamesn.com

Are any of you old enough (or Half-Life-obsessed enough) to remember Zombie Panic? One of the original, Infected-style PvP experiences that no doubt inspired similar modes in the likes of Halo and Call of Duty, it put a team of single-life, gun-toting survivors against a rival team of zombies with unlimited respawns. Should a survivor die, they become a zombie and join the other team. While a Source engine sequel has been around for a while on Steam, the original Zombie Panic mod has been absent from Valve's platform for 22 years - until now. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: From new Command and Conquer and Half-Life campaigns to a full expansion for an RPG classic, these are the top ten mods of the year New FPS Half-Life Element 64 has just launched a demo on Steam, but Valve's not involved A new, Valve-less Half-Life campaign is out now and puts a completely fresh perspective on the original FPS

Valve veteran imperiously scorns reports that it's secretly finished Half-Life 3 and moving devs to other projects: 'They've been done for months! They just sit on the game! They're just relaxing!'

by Rich Stanton

It's not like the Half-Life 3 rumour mill ever went away, but over the past few years the tinfoil hats have been a-twitching more than ever. If it's not one thing, it's another: the anniversary of Half-Life 2, the latest mention of "HLX" (speculated to be an internal codename) in the Steam backend or, my personal favourite, a spike in pizza deliveries near Valve's offices... Read more.

Here's that noir thriller built in the original Half-Life engine you asked for

by Rick Lane

There's been a surprisingly strong run of Half-Life total conversions of late, by which I mean there have been two of them. November brought us Diffusion, a massively ambitious sci-fi adventure with some truly eye-popping environment design, especially considering the age of its tech. Yes, it featured some terrible AI generated text-to-speech. But its creator is working on fixing that and recently revealed some of the human cast for its English dub... Read more.

From new Command and Conquer and Half-Life campaigns to a full expansion for an RPG classic, these are the top ten mods of the year

by editor@pcgamesn.com

It's not often I get to write about Half-Life these days, even if fans are absolutely certain that the threequel is on the way. I still don't think Gabe Newell can count that high, but at least we've got an army of loyal modders to create new experiences for Gordon Freeman to explore. The majority of my gaming time this year has been spent on modded playthroughs, so I anticipated ModDB's annual roundup of the best mods of 2025 with bated breath. We, the players, voted for the top mods of the year, and the results are finally in. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New FPS Half-Life Element 64 has just launched a demo on Steam, but Valve's not involved A new, Valve-less Half-Life campaign is out now and puts a completely fresh perspective on the original FPS Ambitious, unofficial Half-Life expansion wraps up a 24-year-old cliffhanger

10 years in the making, this total conversion based on Half-Life is every bit as ambitious as Black Mesa

by Rick Lane

There was a specific moment while playing Diffusion where it shifted from being merely a highly capable Half-Life mod to one of the most remarkable conversions of Valve's classic FPS I've ever played. It's a moment reminiscent of Xen's reveal in Crowbar Collective's remake of Black Mesa, a sense of wonder imbued in equal parts by the sci-fi vista placed before you and the fact you know that it's running on the technical equivalent of a restored 1930s sedan... Read more.

This Half-Life mod reimagines the game as a boomer shooter—yes, even boomier than the original

by Justin Wagner

Half-Life revolutionized the first-person shooter when it released in 1998, what with its top shelf storytelling and novel puzzles. But who needs any of that crap? What if there was a game that turned the clock back just like, a year or two—same alien menace, some of the same innovations, but it plays a hell of a lot more like Quake. No, I'm not talking about Unreal, I'm talking about Half-Life: Element 64, a fresh mod that released a demo today on Steam... Read more.

New FPS Half-Life Element 64 has just launched a demo on Steam, but Valve's not involved

by editor@pcgamesn.com

Half-Life 3 fever might be hotter right now than it has been in years. With the announcement of the new Valve Steam Machine and Steam Frame VR headset, desperate fans have convinced themselves that this is finally the time where the tale of Gordon Freeman and company makes its long-awaited comeback. There's even a small part of me that believes them. But what I do know is that there's a new Half-Life game that's just launched a demo on Steam, albeit one without Valve's direct involvement. This is Half-Life: Element 64, and you can try it today. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: A new, Valve-less Half-Life campaign is out now and puts a completely fresh perspective on the original FPS Ambitious, unofficial Half-Life expansion wraps up a 24-year-old cliffhanger New Half-Life mod rebuilds Halo multiplayer inside Valve's original engine

Geoff Keighley denies he's hiding Half-Life 3 in his Steam wishlist, posts a screenshot to prove it, nobody believes him, and I'm starting to wonder if he's just messing with us

by Andy Chalk

Half-Life 3 fever has been running hot this week, for reasons—and I use that term loosely—we laid out here, which can very generally be described as "it's November and we're all a little bored and restless." One small bit of pseudo-evidence did catch my eye, though: As PC Gamer's freest man Tyler Wilde noted, "Geoff Keighley posted a 👀 emoji." What?.. Read more.

A new, Valve-less Half-Life campaign is out now and puts a completely fresh perspective on the original FPS

by editor@pcgamesn.com

Rumors of Half-Life 3 swirl once more. Could this finally be the time when Valve unleashes a new chapter in its iconic series, hailed among the best FPS games ever to this day? The good news is that there is a new Half-Life story that you can play right now, although this one doesn't come from the Steam developer. Instead, the Half-Life: Insecure campaign is a fan-made project that puts a unique perspective on Gordon Freeman's original outing, and it's finally finished and available to download right now. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Ambitious, unofficial Half-Life expansion wraps up a 24-year-old cliffhanger New Half-Life mod rebuilds Halo multiplayer inside Valve's original engine Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and even Day of Defeat have been updated by Valve

Renegade graphics warlock makes Half-Life look like Half-Life 2, then runs it on an ancient laptop, raising a middle finger to poorly optimised PC games

by Rick Lane

We're in another grim period for poorly optimised PC games, with the last couple of years bringing us a string of power-hungry virtual slideshows such as 2023's Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and, more recently, Borderlands 4. Corpos like Randy Pitchford think we should stop moaning and fork out for a better PC, as playing the best-looking games simply demands a rig capable of lighting a small town... Read more.

Whatever happened to They Hunger: Lost Souls, the sequel to one of Half-Life's best mods?

by Rick Lane

If you followed the Half-Life modding scene at the turn of the Millennium, you undoubtedly encountered They Hunger. Developed by Black Widow Games and released as a PC Gamer exclusive on demo discs in 2000, They Hunger took the tech and design tenets of Half-Life and transposed them to an all-new zombie horror adventure. Delivering a near-professional grade experience, it's one of the best singleplayer Half-Life mods ever made, a thrilling and often deeply weird survival horror game created at a time when zombies were still relatively novel... Read more.

Ambitious, unofficial Half-Life expansion wraps up a 24-year-old cliffhanger

by editor@pcgamesn.com

You think of Half-Life, and you immediately think Valve. It's a series synonymous with Steam and PC gaming as a whole, but it has ventured onto other platforms, too. No, I'm not talking about Alyx (which is still a Steam-only game, despite the fact that you can play it on non-Valve headsets), this is Half-Life: Decay. This DLC for the original game was designed by Randy Pitchford and developed by Gearbox Software for the PlayStation 2 back in 2001. If you ever wanted to learn the fate of Drs. Colette Green and Gina Cross, you'll finally be able to, thanks to a new set of mods. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New Half-Life mod rebuilds Halo multiplayer inside Valve's original engine Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and even Day of Defeat have been updated by Valve This early version of Half-Life Blue Shift includes a bizarre G-Man moment