Valve Updates ‘Half-Life,’ ‘Opposing Force’ & ‘Blue Shift’ — Hinting At Possible ‘Half-Life 3’ Release?

Valve has released a new update for its “Half-Life” game. Find out more below.

In a shocking turn of events, Valve rolled out a new update for its 19-year-old science fiction first-person shooter video game “Half-Life.” As the company’s debut product that was launched in November 1998, fans of the game didn’t really expect to get an update at the present time. However, fans shouldn’t really anticipate big changes from this update since it only fixes certain crashes in the game.

“Half-Life” Update

Per the official release notes, here are the changes that the new update brings:

• Fixed crash when entering certain malformed strings into the game console. Thanks to Marshal Webb from BackConnect, Inc for reporting this.
• Fixed crash when loading a specially crafted malformed BSP file. Thanks to Grant Hernandez (@Digital_Cold) for reporting this.
• Fixed malformed SAV files allowing arbitrary files to be written into the game folder. Thanks to Vsevolod Saj for reporting this.
• Fixed a crash when quickly changing weapons that are consumable. Thanks to Sam Vanheer for reporting this.
• Fixed crash when setting custom decals

“Opposing Force” & “Blue Shift” Updates

Valve also did not forget to implement the same update to the game’s expansion packs “Opposing Force” and “Blue Shift.” The release notes for the expansions contain the same entries as the ones found in the patch notes for “Half-Life.” And again, the updates for the two come several years after their release. “Opposing Force” was launched way back in November 1999, while “Blue Shift” was released in June 2001.

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The updates pretty much focus on fixing the issues that some players have raised to Valve. Most of the fixes address crash scenarios due to reported bugs. Valve is thankful to those who made the reports as these helped them know which issues to repair.

“Half-Life 3” Speculation

Obviously, the updates came as a surprise to many fans of “Half-Life.” Many have left comments on Steam questioning why Valve is rolling out these updates all of a sudden. “Am I the only one who thinks this is very… weird? An update for HL1 in late 2017 for seemingly trivial issues that could’ve been solved decades ago? What was the prime motive for this extremely specific patch?” one user wrote. “Wow, they updated a lot of their old games! Strange you’re doing that now,” another stated.

Many other fans of the franchise couldn’t help but speculate that the new updates could be hinting at the possible release of “Half-Life 3.” Since the release of the updates, many have been writing comments on Steam claiming that these could be the sign that “Half-Life 3” is coming soon. Some are even demanding Valve to just confirm the new game already and spill some details about it.

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“Half-Life” Remake Setback

Meanwhile, it was revealed last month that the “Half-Life” remake by Crowbar Collective was facing a setback. PC Gamer has learned from the developing studio that “Black Mesa’s” section for alien world Xen have been delayed to December. The area was supposed to be released this summer, but the developer wanted to ensure its quality first so it is taking more time to work on it.

"We know that this is not what anyone would want to hear, but after taking a long and hard look at what we want to achieve, we have decided that this is for the best," Crowbar Collective stated. "We do not want to compromise on Xen's quality in any way. That said, we consider December to be a do-or-die deadline."