The NPCs have not been blinking in Half-Life 2 for several YEARS, but Valve has finally addressed the issue.

No, it’s not a 1.5-decade bug (Half-Life 2 came out in the Autumn of 2004…). It’s just (?) five years old. This bug, which effectively stopped the Half-Life 2 NPCs’ blinking (which, let’s face it, is a natural and necessary thing to do…), has popped up in 2014 when Steam has changed to the SteamPipe content distribution system. The bug affects many games and mods that use the Source engine, and until now, unofficial solutions had to be used to fix the problems.

However, Valve released an official statement where they revealed that they don’t just sit around on the money bags they gain via Steam (obligatory question: where’s Half-Life 3, Gabe?), but they also care about their games somewhat. They have addressed the following issues: They fixed a hitch when saving games, fixed SteamVR running when entering the settings menu, fixed missing sounds on combine soldiers, and, they also fixed NPCs not blinking. The patch was also made for Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, and Half-Life: Source as well.

We can still be critical towards Valve, though, as this bug has been there since 2014, so they should have fixed it earlier, as the issues showed up in THEIR games, not in a third-party title. It’s hard to believe that the previously revolutionary Valve has stepped back amongst the developers to focus on Steam instead (which now has a significant competitor with Epic Games Store and their exclusivity deals…).

Still, we should be happy that we can now forget about the blinking issues, as Valve has done what they should have done several years back.

Source: PCGamer

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