Every day main up by way of the sixteenth (the official day Half-Life 2 was launched), Ars Technica can be publishing a brand new article trying again on the recreation and its affect. This is an excerpt from an article revealed as we speak 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 may think about that piece of companion software program — with the pithy identify Steam — would finally turn out to be the important thing distribution level and social networking heart for the 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 recreation 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 immediately advertising and promoting its video games (and, finally, 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 challenge that leverages the applied sciences of NVIDIA’s RTX Remix and has the blessing of the unique developer, Valve,” experiences Wccftech. “Orbifold Studios, a workforce of skilled modders, was based particularly to deliver this challenge to fruition.” It is unclear when precisely this challenge can be completed.
Nvidia can be making a gift of a customized Half-Life 2 themed RTX 480 Tremendous Founders Version.