Valve Just Patched A Two-Decade Old Bug In Half Life

The original Half-Life that started it all came out more than two decades ago, and since then, there has been a bug in the game, particularly in the sixth Blast Pit chapter, that makes the animation of the scientist getting pulled away from a tentacle monster seem out of sync. Many wrote it off as a limitation of the game’s engine that barred the sequence from being seamless, but it turns out, all that was just a bug.  

Valve has finally fixed this scene in today's Half-Life update pic.twitter.com/IDgnieZOVU

— Vinícius Medeiros (@VinciusMedeiro6) November 23, 2023

Notice how the set-piece plays out without a weird delay in the footage above. What you’re seeing there is the bug taken care of, but for those not in the know, the following clip ahead can shed some light on how the glitch manifested prior to the patch. Skip on over to the 5:35 mark in the video of Blast Pit’s entire walkthrough to compare the difference from a before-and-after perspective.  

As the news found itself circulating on Reddit, one user pointed out, “Important to note that the bug didn’t occur on Win95 at launch. It was introduced at some point later and just never patched out.”Adding to that, a Redditor pitched in, “It came with the Steam release that came with widescreen and some other minor improvements.” 

In case you missed it, Valve just rolled out a beefy update for Half-Life on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. Releasing an exclusive interview with the developers who worked on the game back then, the iconic first-person shooter has received a mini-campaign in the name of Half-Life Uplink, 4 new multiplayer maps, revised graphics settings, Steam Deck support, and more enhancements.

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• Modder Recreates The Half-Life Remake Black Mesa In VR

All that, and the ability to play Half-Life for free over the weekend and to claim it forever afterward, although this offer has obviously expired now. The latter led to a significant bump for the game’s player count, which had rested slowly for years on end hitherto, crossing about 34,000 concurrent users on Steam. For an FPS that came out 25 years ago, I’d say that’s pretty commendable. 

Half-Life was released on November 19, 1998 on PC. In the years afterward, the title found itself hopping on other platforms as well, namely PlayStation 2, Linux, and macOS. It’s a first-person shooter with narrative-based gameplay, putting players in control of a theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman, as he takes it upon himself to save the world after the occurrence of an alien invasion.