Half-Life 2 Remake Pitched by World War Z Developer, Valve Declined

Ah, Half-Life. The betrayal that many continue to lament regarding this epic franchise from Valve and its failure to make it to number 3 despite how the journey left off. Still, the Half-Life community continues to be a strong powerhouse in gaming and it’s because of that success that the studio behind World War Z was interested in perhaps crafting a remake of the second entry. Sounds awesome, except that Valve turned it down …

“After we did Halo Anniversary and Halo 2 Anniversary, as part of the Master Chief Collection, I reached out to Gabe Newell personally, because I knew him from a past life, and I said I want to remake Half-Life 2,” said Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch to Game Watcher in a recent interview. “That’s all I want to do. I won’t charge you anything for it. I’ll do it for rev-share and doesn’t even need to be a big rev-share. I just really want to do because I love that game so much.”

Unfortunately for those (me, I’m talking about me) that were interested in seeing this happened, the Valve boss promptly shut it down. Not so much that a remake would be off the table, but that if there were one it would be handled by the Valve team internally and not through another studio.

Though that reasoning makes sense, obviously, the internal-only policy hasn’t always been the case. Black Mesa was a mod first and eventually became a full-on expansion, though the nature of that progression was a bit left of center. 

Still, if there was to be a Half-Life 2 remake, the World War Z studio won’t be a part of it. A pity, because their take on the zombie genre has been likened to that of Valve’s other major series, Left 4 Dead, quite often, so the report with the community is already well established. 

H/T PC Gamer