Valve’s Half Life 3 has been a bit of a meme among the gaming community for several years now, ever since the release of Half Life 2 in 2004 many people have been awaiting the sequel that will likely never come to be. But, in almost 20 years of anticipation they tend to jump on any news featuring Half Life as an opportunity to make jokes about Gabe’s third installment so imagine how many sparks were flying earlier today when the first Half Life game was made completely free on Steam.

Valve has made the first Half-Life free until the 20th of November.

This is in conjunction with some movement on other Half-Life titles spotted on SteamDB.https://t.co/Zzm7GiXPo9 pic.twitter.com/SFxtjmz2ut

— Tyler McVicker (@Tyler_McV) November 16, 2023

The jokes seem to write themselves as not even an hour later the option to buy Half Life for free was taken down from Steam.

Valve has removed the “Get Half-Life” section of the store page.

What is happening? https://t.co/NFiSnFDUy1

— Tyler McVicker (@Tyler_McV) November 16, 2023

It’s very likely that a few free copies are out there in the wild, though there have been reports that the option to get Half Life for free didn’t work even when it was available. The obvious answer to why it was removed is likely just an operator error, someone on the Steam team just made the deal available sooner than it should have been.

And, unfortunately, the reason behind the deal existing in the first place isn’t some grand Half Life 3 announcement hype package, it’s likely because in just a few days it will be the first Half Life’s birthday, and a pretty big one too as Half Life was first released on November 19^th, 1998 so this will be the 25^th anniversary of the series.

This sale is likely for that fact, and while Half Life 3 may never happen, the first two games are still icons of the industry and a celebration of their history is more than earned. If you have an interest in PC gaming there can be no higher recommendation than the pioneers of many of the standards set for games that hold up even today. If you want to get Half Life for free than I highly recommend keeping an eye on its Steam page in the next few days.