6 ms·
Aside from just generating tons of goodwill, does anyone have any insight into why Valve would do this? Obviously, I think it's great regardless of the motivati
by bjord 3y ago
Aside from just generating tons of goodwill, does anyone have any insight into why Valve would do this? Obviously, I think it's great regardless of the motivation, but are there rumblings of Half Life 3 that I've missed or something?
- dom96 3y agoHalf Life 3 already happened and it was called Half Life: Alyx.
- account42 3y agoIt's not a proper Half-Life game if you don't play as Gordon Freeman. Alyx also misses many of the things that made the HL series great and replaces them with "modern" game design anti-features. Not looking forward to future HL games going even further in that direction. The new voice actor doesn't even sound anything like alyx FFS and her lines are a perfect argument why the silent protagonist in the HL games was not a mistake.
- vbeeaz 3y ago[flagged]
- LtWorf 3y agovr only
- solardev 3y agoIt's VR only.
- Timon3 3y agoAside from the obvious meaning of your comment - there is a mod which makes Alyx playable without VR: https://github.com/bfeber/HLA-NoVR https://github.com/bfeber/HLA-NoVR
- capableweb 3y agoJust like a lot of early 3D PC games weren't possible to play without a graphics accelerator card (GPU for you younglings) which not a lot of people had, these new VR games are not possible to play without VR hardware. Doesn't mean early 3D PC games weren't PC games, and it doesn't mean that contemporary VR games aren't also PC games.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stetrain 3y agoI played it fine on my PC. But I have a VR headset for my PC. I'm not sure that makes it not a PC game. In the 90s you might have needed to buy a graphics card or sound card to play a game, but it was still a PC game.
- vbeeaz 3y agoAll games ended up needing a GPU and a soundcard - in fact they became so necessary that all CPUs and motherboards today come with a GPU and a soundcard respectively. While VR headsets were a gimmick of the moment. (Yes I know some CPUs come with no GPU but that's because you will buy a discrete GPU which only furthers my point)
- lawlessone 3y agoI think it's VR only.
- tshaddox 3y agoAnd was played (and playable) by almost no one, sadly.
- kulahan 3y agoa really incredible VR game though
- hotnfresh 3y agoI’m waiting for an update that lets me play it without VR. I’m probably never going to have a VR rig that’ll play it. My wife has a couple for work (not capable of playing that game, though) and we’re both free to use them for whatever we like, but never bother. Certainly not gonna pay for a headset just for one game. I have enough barely-used electronic crap around as it is.
- solardev 3y agoI tried it in VR for half an hour or so. It was really nice compared to most VR shovelware. High production values, fun interactivity, etc. But remove the VR and you're left with an above-average short FPS that would've been entirely unremarkable if not for the Half-Life tie-in. If they released it for non VR, it would probably get trashed just for not being HL3. Honestly I don't think you're missing much. It's a good VR game only because the bar for VR gaming in general is so much lower.
- Bluecobra 3y ago
- ender341341 3y agoAlyx was really good (though I'm a wuss and couldn't finish it) but not a continuation of the cliffhanger that we've been sitting on for 16 years since episode 2.
- SteveNuts 3y agoWhen/if HL3 is announced, I actually believe it might break parts of the internet.
- ascagnel_ 3y agoA decade ago, yes. Valve was riding high on the dual successes of Dota 2 and Portal 2, we were only 6 years out from HL2Ep2, and CS:GO was newly released. Today, not so much. Aside from a prequel, the series had been dormant for as longer than it had been alive (11 years alive 1998-2007, 13 years dormant 2007-2020), and the prequel required a pricey hardware peripheral to run. It’d get attention, but it wouldn’t be that big of a deal at this point.
- account42 3y ago*interquel - Alyx takes place after HL1.
- dabluecaboose 3y agoMild HL:ALyx spoiler: If you'd actually finished the game, you'd know that it does continue that cliffhanger (briefly)
- TheFreim 3y agoCliffhanger A swapped with Cliffhanger B
- debugnik 3y agoNo spoilers then, but the ending of Alyx does retcon the old cliffhanger.
- deelowe 3y agoBecause Valve does whatever it feels like doing and honestly, I love them for it. I wish more companies would follow in their footsteps (e.g. not going public), but few have the luxury of being founded by someone who was already set for life financially at the time.
- the_snooze 3y agoValve isn't beholden to any external shareholders, and Steam is as close to a money-printing machine a private company can have. Combine that with the fact that Gabe and company seem to have pretty decent values in line with their customers' interests, and you get nice outcomes like this.
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoI think it speak mlre aboub Gabe's ethics than whatever model of technical causality we want to impose on this.
- behringer 3y agoAnd let's be realistic, this is going to sell an absolute crapload of HL2 to a whole new generation of gamers.
- Macha 3y agoI don't think so. HL2 is an old game by now, way older than HL1 was when HL2 came out (6 years from HL1 to Hl2, 19 years from HL2 to now) and I just don't see it appealing to players unless they're going back to view older games.
- chmod775 3y agoThey make 30% on almost every PC video game sale in the west. Even if they sell 10 million copies of HL2 tomorrow, it's only going to move their bottom-line marginally. And that's ignoring the fact that HL2 is 90% off right now ($1) and they're giving away HL1 for free. No. Valve just does whatever Valve wants. The most valuable thing they're getting out of this is probably goodwill.
- xd1936 3y agoMore content for their Steam Deck handheld?
- xcv123 3y agoIt still makes a few dollars. New players are born every day. The original Half Life has a lot of sentimental value for the company and they won't let it rot.
- solardev 3y agoIt's just a little dose of nostalgia. I think Half Life was one of the highest rated games of all time before Baldur's Gate 3 (both are 97% at PCGamer, for example). That's a pretty rare accomplishment worth celebrating, especially for those of us who grew up with the series... I do kinda wish they incorporated the fan Black Mesa remake and improvements, though.
- account42 3y ago> I do kinda wish they incorporated the fan Black Mesa remake and improvements, though. No thanks. Black Mesa is a nice game, but it is not Half-Life 1 and should not replace it.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoBesides second order stuff like that it might help some Steam Deck sales (mostly by demonstrating their commitment to the platform and attract other companies to develop for it, moreso than anybody rushing out to buy a Steam Deck specifically to play Half-Life), the fact that Valve does stuff like this that's not directly "make all the money right this second"-driven is in no small part why Valve has such goodwill with the PC gaming community. In theory, it's not that hard to compete with Steam. Valve's cut of game sales is massive, and a competitor could easily slash into that to undercut them. Which is what Epic Games is trying to do. Yet, Valve maintains an extremely dominant market condition largely predicated on that goodwill. And, of course, exactly because of that dominant market condition, they've got all the money they could possibly want to burn on random vanity projects.
- majora2007 3y agoWell it's not exactly trivial to build a software as extensive without just being a rip-off and having the share of games at launch. Gamers are extremely picky and it costs tons to build out a scalable system. This is where Epic failed. Sure they gave me a ton of free games, but their UX was horrible that I just never went to it and stayed within Steam.
- account42 3y agoNo, the software part really is trivial compared to getting developers and gamers on board. Epic failing at it is an anecdote, not proof of anything.
- omgmajk 3y agoEpic launcher actually randomly crashes my display window manager from time to time, I just can't have it running in the background as I do with Steam.
- maccard 3y agoEntirely marketing for steam. It coincides with the Oled Steam Decks, for example.
- grotorea 3y agoI guess that's it and some general marketing for their stuff. I doubt there are all that many people who would pay for HL1 remaining after 25 years unless it's a remake or something.