Every day main up by the sixteenth (the official day Half-Life 2 was launched), Ars Technica will likely be publishing a brand new article trying again on the sport and its impression. Here is an excerpt from an article revealed in the present day by Ars Technica’s Kyle Orland: When tens of millions of keen players first put in Half-Life 2 20 years in the past, many, if not most, of them discovered they wanted to put in one other piece of software program alongside it. Few on the time might think about that piece of companion software program — with the pithy title Steam — would ultimately develop into the important thing distribution level and social networking heart for your complete PC gaming ecosystem, making the concept of bodily PC video games an anachronism within the course of.
Whereas Half-Life 2 wasn’t the primary Valve sport launched on Steam, it was the primary high-profile title to require the platform, even for gamers putting in the sport from bodily retail discs. That requirement gave Valve entry to tens of millions of players with new Steam accounts and helped the corporate bypass conventional retail publishers of the day by straight advertising and marketing and promoting its video games (and, ultimately, video games from different builders). However 2004-era Steam additionally confronted a vociferous backlash from gamers who noticed the software program as a chunk of nuisance DRM (digital rights administration) that did little to justify its existence on the time. In honor of the anniversary, Orbifold Studios launched a brand new Half-Life 2 RTX trailer. “[T]his is a remastering undertaking that leverages the applied sciences of NVIDIA’s RTX Remix and has the blessing of the unique developer, Valve,” studies Wccftech. “Orbifold Studios, a staff of skilled modders, was based particularly to convey this undertaking to fruition.” It is unclear when precisely this undertaking will likely be completed.
Nvidia can also be giving freely a customized Half-Life 2 themed RTX 480 Tremendous Founders Version.
