Half Life Merch – Official Half Life merch for fans

About Half-Life

Half-Life is a 1998 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Valve Corporation and published by Sierra Studios for Windows. It was Valve’s debut product and the first game in the Half-Life series. The player assumes the role of Gordon Freeman, a scientist who must escape the Black Mesa Research Facility after it is invaded by aliens following a disastrous scientific experiment. The gameplay consists of combat, exploration and puzzles.

Half-Life received acclaim for its graphics, gameplay and narrative and won more than 50 PC “Game of the Year” awards. It is considered one of the most influential FPS games and one of the greatest video games ever made. By 2008, it had sold more than nine million copies. It was ported to the PlayStation 2 in 2001, along with the multiplayer expansion Decay, and to OS X and Linux in 2013. Valve ported Half-Life to its Source engine as Half-Life: Source in 2004. In 2020, Crowbar Collective released an unofficial remake, Black Mesa.

Half-Life inspired numerous fan-made mods, some of which became standalone games, such as Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and Sven Co-op. It was followed by the expansion packs Opposing Force (1999) and Blue Shift (2001), developed by Gearbox Software, and the sequels Half-Life 2 (2004), Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006), Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007) and Half-Life: Alyx (2020).

In November 2023, for the 25th anniversary of Half-Life, Valve updated the game’s Steam release to revert in-game content to its original 1998 state, fix long-standing bugs, and add additional content including the Half-Life Uplink demo, four new multiplayer maps, Steam Deck support, rendering improvements, and support for 4K resolution monitors. Valve also released an hour-long documentary on the creation of Half-Life, featuring commentary from the game’s original developers, designers, and artists. Two days after the release, Half-Life reached 33,471 concurrent players on Steam, its highest-ever number.Half-Life 2 was announced at E3 2003 and released in 2004. The player controls Freeman 20 years after the Black Mesa incident in the dystopian City 17, where he joins a rebellion against an alien regime. It was followed by the episodic games Half-Life 2 Episode One in 2006 and Half-Life 2 Episode Two in 2007. After canceling several other Half-Life projects, Valve released Half-Life Alyx in 2020.