Half-Life 2 is free on Steam – here's why you need to download it today
Don't miss out on this amazing Half-Life 2 deal
🆓 Valve is giving away Half-Life 2 for free
🚨 You’ve got until 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT
👏 Those who download it will get the Half-Life 2 RTX update for free
🤩 The update completely overhauls the game’s visuals using ray tracing, remastered assets, and other improvements
Half-Life 2 is easily one of the best PC games ever made, setting genre-defining standards that many first-person shooters aim to replicate today.
If you haven’t played Half-Life 2, or even if you have, there’s never been a better reason to reunite with Gordan Freedman as the game is currently free on Steam.
However, there’s also another huge incentive to add Half-Life 2 to your Steam library while it’s free, as you’ll receive the upcoming Half-Life 2 RTX update when it releases at no extra cost, which completely overhauls the game’s visuals.
If you have an Nvidia graphics card, you can look forward to full ray tracing, remastered assets, and DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction. You’ll need a beefy GPU to run it, of course, but that doesn’t mean you should miss this opportunity to get this extensive remaster for free.
As you can see in the clip from the Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary documentary, the game looks absolutely incredible. Every detail has been redesigned to bring the game up to modern-day standards, with many elements surpassing even the best-looking titles today.
The offer to grab Half-Life 2 (with Episode 1 & 2) for free on Steam ends today, Monday, 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT. You’ll end up kicking yourself if you miss out.
Adam Vjestica is The Shortcut’s Senior Editor. Formerly TechRadar’s Gaming Hardware Editor, Adam has also worked at Nintendo of Europe as a Content Marketing Editor, where he helped launch the Nintendo Switch. Follow him on X @ItsMrProducts.