It might not seem like it, but it's been almost twenty years since Valve redefined the FPS genre with Half-Life in November 1998. Fans might be forgiven for thinking that the studio has forgotten about the franchise, but a new patch released this week reveals that this isn't the case.

Valve has updated the original Half-Life with a number of minor fixes to issues that have been raised by the community. It's pretty minor stuff on the whole, but it demonstrates the company's dedication to preserving a game that's still considered to be among the greatest of all time.

The patch fixes a crash that occurs when certain strings are entered into the console, and a similar problem that arises when quickly swapping between weapons that are consumable. Likewise, it fixes a crash that tends to rear its head when players are attempting to load custom decals into the game.

It also makes some adjustments to compatibility with external files. Previously, the game might crash when loading modified .BSP files, or allow arbitrary files to be written into the game folder as a result of a malformed .SAV file, but both of these problems should now have been addressed.

This isn't the only effort Valve has made to preserve Half-Life in recent months. Earlier this year, the game was made available in an uncensored format in Germany for the first time, with such a release having been prevented for nearly two decades by the country's stringent rules on violent content.

Of course, Half-Life fans aren't really looking for patches and uncensored re-releases — they're much more interested in a brand new entry in the series. It's looking more and more likely that Half-Life 3 will never come to fruition, so any hopes for a sequel may well turn out to be a pipe dream.

Half-Life is available now for the PC.

Source: Steam