Last week, a listing for Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection was spotted on the Steam Database. While it’s not an official remaster from Valve, insider Tyler McVicker claims the project has “Valve’s consent.”
The “Valve’s consent” thing might be a bit of stretch. McVicker probaly means that Valve has allowed the project to have its own Steam page and even keep Half-Life 2 as part of its title. In fact, Valve has been pretty friendly towards modder Filip Victor, the creator of Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection, since 2015, when he released the Half-Life 2: Update mod. The 2015 “free and extensive community-developed update for Half-Life 2 featuring beautiful lighting, countless bug fixes, and a brand new Community Commentary Mode” even lists Valve as the developer along with Victor himself.
Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection seems to have started as a patch to Half-Life 2: Update, but has since gotten big enough to warrant a stand-alone release and a separate Steam page. It will also include Half-Life 2‘s episodic expansions when it comes out, although when that could be we don’t know. What we do know is that the improvements of Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection are intended “to put Half-Life 2: Update / Episodes to shame.”
Whatever the deal with Remastered Collection is, Valve remains very liberal when it comes to mods based on its iconic IP. With Black Mesa that fully came out last year, Valve famously allowed the devs to sell it on Steam.
In case you missed the story of Black Mesa, you might want to check out our interview with the title’s project lead Adam Engels.