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    Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Documentary

    Valve

    3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2024–2025

    YouTube

    2:01:18 · 9.3M views · Nov 15, 2024

    Valve's two-hour documentary for Half-Life 2's 20th anniversary, with team members discussing development, nearly running out of money, being hacked, the publisher lawsuit and the birth of Steam.

    HN recommends it as an excellent inside look at Valve's history, its technology and the games industry of the time.

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    4 comments from Hacker News

    1. @sky2224Oct 2025· in “Ask HN: What are some of your favorite documentaries?”

      I really enjoyed the Half Life 2: 20th Anniversary documentary. It gave a pretty neat perspective of what the games' industry was like at the time, and also made me really appreciate the technology that Valve was building. A lot of really innovative stuff came out of the creation of that game. this video

      Strongly recommendsView on HN
    2. @bejdNov 2024· in “A summer intern once saved Valve from a near-fatal lawsuit”

      Mentioned in the article, but the source is the excellent YouTube documentary Valve released for Half-Life 2's 20th Anniversary [0] [0] this video

      Strongly recommendsView on HN
    3. @scrlkFeb 2025· in “Half-Life 2 and Dishonored art lead Viktor Antonov has died”

      RIP. For those who haven't seen it yet, he was interviewed in the HL2 20th Anniversary Documentary: this video (intro and chapter 1 at 13:40)

      RecommendsView on HN
    4. @mrbn100fulJan 2025· in “Why Half-Life 3 speculation is reaching a fever pitch again”

      They drop the episodic content idea, it will be a full game You can watch the 20th anniversary doc, they speak about it : this video

      CitesView on HN