KalNet Message Board

Doug Lombardi of Valve Software has sent us the official word on the release date of Half-Life 2: Aftermath, the official and much anticipated add-on for the ever-popular Half-Life 2, as well as Half-Life 2: Platinum (which will include Aftermath, Half-Life 2, Half-Life, Counter-Strike: Source, and Day of Defeat: Source). Direct from the mouth of Mr. Lombardi:

Aftermath and Half-Life 2: Platinum are due out on April 24.

HL1 DM will be included in Aftermath, and released fairly close to the same time.
The date to circle on your calendar is April 24, 2006. The remake of Half-Life 1: Deathmatch will be included with your Half-Life 2: Aftermath purchase, and will follow shortly after the release of Aftermath.


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Update: TeamKilled.net has confirmed that Half-Life 1: Deathmatch will in fact be included with Aftermath, and the retail price will hover around the $20 mark.

Half-Life 2: Platinum will be sold for around $50, while there will be pre-order specials (to be later announced) available on steam, and various other retailers.

Dear Jason Hill:

This is an automated email to inform you that the following item(s) from your pre-order are currently awaiting the release date.

You will receive a ship notice email as soon as the inventory is released.

This order contains
Order date: 02 Feb 2006, 11:29:28

Items(s) currently on order: Release date
Half-Life 2: Aftermath (PC) 27 Jun, 2006

It's been a good run but Valve finally beat me down.

After 4 years of operating a Counter-Strike server and 3 since we launched the portal site hardgaming.com it's time to close the doors and walk into the sunset.

For those of you who've been living under a rock for the last couple months, (years really), Valve has in my opinion systematically destroyed the ability of Counter-Strike to attract and retain the huge playerbase that it enjoyed during the 1.3-1.5 days. Since Valve took over Counter-Strike from the original developers they have, from my point of view, consistently ignored the needs of the admin community and consistently released untested or poorly tested releases.

What was bad during the 1.6 days became unbearable after CS:S was released. Nearly every steam update introduced some major bug. Either a showstopper bug that completely prevented server operation, or a gameplay bug that killed the enjoyment factor of the game. Specific examples include;
# Breaking the admin utilities with nearly every update.
# logging wrong or duplicate SteamID's - causing problems with player stats and admin utilities
# Immediate crashing of the Linux dedicated server on instance start - affected every single linux server in the world
# Round freeze bug causing the game to lock up every 4th round or so
# The "spawn entity" bug that was an engraved invitation for myg0t type people to completely disrupt the game
# and many others dating back to the original release of CS:S

These issues and other general gameplay issues implemented by Valve have, in my opinion, chased away nearly all of the serious CS:S players. What's left consists of either the competitive crowd, that mostly sticks to scrims on private clan servers and sanctioned matches, or the fly-by-night asshats that join a server simply to stir up trouble or have already been banned by 90% of the servers out there.

So faced with catering to the asshat group in order to maintain player traffic I've decided to pull the plug on [H]ard|Gaming. Effective immediately the servers will be shut down in order that the hardware they run on can be re-purposed for more useful things. The website will remain up for a couple weeks while I transition email and some other services and to allow you guys to make your final forum posts.

I do want to take a moment to specifically thank certain people that helped make [H]|G possible;
# Kevin Larkin, aka hondaman. Thanks man, it was a fun couple years
# Kyle Bennett, Thanks for giving us a chance to do something fun and for all the support over the years
# John Tyrell, aka Goaty. Thanks for putting up with my 10 million scripting help requests.
# Michael Grey, aka battlemaster. Our chief admin and right hand guy, thanks for everything and good luck with [BFG gaming]
# Brad Haas, aka hogg. dude you've been here for like ever! gg man, gg.
# Robert Pate, aka Agent_137. Thanks for never letting me get complacent.
# Kristopher Johnson, aka leth4l. Thanks for the great job on news, it's only too bad that it was a lost cause.
# Thanks to everyone I didn't mention that helped us through the years, we couldn't have done it without you.

If at some time in the future a game comes along with the real potential to be the next counter-strike and is not hobbled by restrictive licensing agreements or poor admin support, [H]ard|Gaming may be revived but until then...

Good Luck, Have fun.