Most significant Half-Life 2 upgrade in years suggests Valve is preparing its magazine for Steam Deck

Shutoff silently released a substantial Half-Life 2 update this week, apparently to prepare the old game for its freshly revealed Steam Deck Verified program.

As Shutoff sleuth Tyler McVicker detected, Half-Life 2 added a new beta branch on October 18. This isn t stated in its Steam community web page, where new updates are normally flagged, but its Steam database background reveals 3 rapid updates. The database modification logs for Half-Life 2 Episode One and Episode Two show similar adjustments. There are states of PS5 controller assimilation too, yet the beta construct is the headliner.

McVicker reports that while a few pests were seemingly compressed as well as a few assets seem to have been upgraded, the UI was the emphasis of the brand-new beta build. Basically, the interface is currently a whole lot larger and less complicated to customize. Interestingly, this construct also allows you to adjust the aspect proportion of the game as well as the UI individually.

The specificity of these modifications suggests that Valve is getting Half-Life 2, arguably the very best game the studio s ever before launched as well as easily one of its most legendary, prepared for the Steam Deck. The recently announced Steam Deck Verified system will see Valve price the whole Steam directory for Steam Deck playability, as well as it possibly desires its very own library of games to pass with flying shades where feasible. Valve specified that games should support the Steam Deck s resolution without sacrificing the legibility of text components like UI, for example, so it s simple to connect that to the tweaks in Half-Life 2 s new beta branch.

In its Verified program expose, Shutoff highlighted Team Fortress 2 as a video game that is usable on Steam Deck yet currently might need some manual tweaking to play well on the handheld. It additionally kept in mind that a video game s Steam Deck compatibility rating may alter in time with updates, so it s feasible other Shutoff video games like Team Citadel 2 will certainly receive updates in the style of Half-Life 2.