Blue Shift in Steam packages half life - portal

[Kruten]

Why wasn't Blue Shift included in the Silver and Gold Edition packages of Half Life 2? Opposing Force and all other Half Life-related games were in it, but not Blue Shift. The packages may have already been a good deal, but if you're going to give the rest of the series, why not take out a different game and have all of them. Now I have to buy Blue Shift separately.

Any ideas why it wasn't?

Edited December 29, 2004 by Kruten

[chuckleslove]

I believe it has to do with Blue Shift being made by another company not Valve. I forget which developer made Blue Shift but they licensed it out, it was the same company that did the port of the original HL to PS2.

[spiralstairs]

I think the company was Gearbox. Hopefully they come out with an expansion where you get to play as the Combine. That would be cool. I'd buy that if if I could manage to pull myself away from WoW.

[Norguard]

Blue-Shift was made by Gearbox, but I don't think that's the reason it's not included. Even though VALVe contracted the company for the game, they own it, as much as they now own CS or DoD. Gearbox also made Opposing Force, and Steam has always had OpFor in its list.

 

There could be a million and one reasons it's not included, but my theory is this:

 

There were several changes made to the engine, during the making of Blue-Shift. It wasn't a mod, like Opposing Force, or Counter-Strike. It was a completely standalone product. It even installed into its own non-Half-Life folder. Every game in Steam has been made as a mod for Half-Life... ...or as a mod for Half-Life 2. Blue Shift was never meant to be a mod, so they basically have to recode parts of the engine before they can do anything with it. ...and VALVe has been kind of busy with Half-Life 2, Half-Life: Source, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source and Team Fortress 2 over the past few years.

 

They said that OpFor and Blue Shift might get the same treatment as Half-Life, and that would be seriously sweet, but I don't expect it to be done until after they're well into releasing and patching most of the games on that list.

[Kruten]

I was thinking it was made by a different company for a while actually, but wasn't sure. I'll check it out.

[Norguard]

Well, in the beginning, it was given to Gearbox and it was originally going to be a Dreamcast game. There wasn't going to be a PC release. Then... ...well, the Dreamcast was tanking, so they reengineered it to be a standalone PC game.

 

It was always under VALVe, under Sierra Studios, but it's never been intended to work as a Half-Life mod.