Valve’s game is about to turn twenty (it’s hard to imagine that the classic, which was delayed after a major leak, debuted in the fall of 2004), so it’s no wonder that Gabe Newell and his team are up to something.

November marks not only the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, but also the 20th anniversary of the Source engine. Valve must be up to something, because SteamDB users have spotted a change in Valve’s already massive database. In the profile of Half-Life 2, a new testing branch has appeared. This is relevant because when the first game turned 25 last year, a testing branch appeared just before the anniversary update.

Half-Life 2 was released on PC on November 16, 2004 (and was the first game to have Steam client support). Since this year’s anniversary falls on a Saturday, it is likely that the update will be released on November 15th. On November 15, 2005, a year after the PC original, came the Xbox port, which was technically excellent but completely lacked multiplayer functionality. On October 10, 2007, the Xbox 360 port arrived, followed by the PlayStation 3 port on December 11, 2007, but these were available as part of The Orange Box (which included the base game, the two episodes, as well as Portal and Team Fortress 2).

Hopefully this update won’t be a big deal, because if the game works great now, it will be annoying for the audience if the anniversary update makes Half-Life 2 a pain to run. There will be a lot of speculation about what references Valve will make to Half-Life 3, but there is no chance that game (or anything with the number 3 in the name) will ever get made.

But in the meantime, what about Deadlock?

Source: Aroged, SteamDB