Half-Life co-op mod getting standalone release on Steam

Sven Co-Op, a multiplayer mod for the original Half-Life that has been in development for nearly 15 years, will get a standalone Steam release using a customized version of Valve's engine, the dev team announced today.

Valve granted the Sven Co-Op dev team access to the GoldSrc engine upon which Half-Life and its expansions were built, allowing them to make changes to improve the game's engine and level editor. The new version of Sven will be completely free, and will include a co-op version of the Half-Life campaign, automatic updates via SteamPipe and improved stability and performance for the aging engine.

"We are grateful beyond expression to Valve for their generosity and efforts put forth to make this possible," artist Josh Polito wrote on the Sven Co-Op forums. "We're looking forward to working with one of the greatest game engines ever made, and we can assure everyone that there are many, many more updates to come."