Half-Life: Alyx arrives in March, and to celebrate, Valve is making the entire saga free-to-play for a limited time. In an announcement last night, the developer confirmed that fans can play as much as they want until the VR game releases.
Valve said that while “Half-Life: Alyx is set before the events of Half-Life 2 and the episodes […] the games share characters and story elements. The Half-Life: Alyx team believes that the best way to enjoy the new game is to play through the old ones, especially Half-Life 2 and the episodes, so we want to make that as easy as possible.”
As a result, all four main-series Half-Life games are currently free to play, and if that weren’t enough, they’re joined in the bundle by Half-Life: Opposing Force, Half-Life: Blue Shift, and even Team Fortress Classic.
Thanks to the change, one of those games has enjoyed something of a resurgence in its player counts. According to Steamcharts, the original game just hit its all-time peak. Numbers have been climbing across the series in the weeks since the announcement of the new game, but Half-Life now has more people playing it than at any time in the last seven and a half years.
This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK, bringing you original reporting, game culture and humour from the British isles.
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