In its blog post about the time-limited freebie, Valve explains the rationale in providing free access to the franchise ahead of the release of Alyx: 'Half-Life: Alyx is set before the events of Half-Life 2 and the episodes, but the games share characters and story elements. If you are already a Steam user, and don't own the following games you can click through to add them to your library (for now) and start playing: The freebie is another canny PR move by Valve, which is aiming to make waves in the VR gaming arena, which seems to have plateaued after the initial rush of excitement during 2016/2017.
Valve has announced that it is celebrating the impending release of Half-Life: Alyx by making the whole of the preceding franchise free to download and play - until the new VR-only game is released.
