Hey all, hope you're doing well. I'm taking this opportunity personally to cover how the community has received Half-Life Legacy now that the weekend has passed since its launch on Friday, Dec. 12, 2025. I will be addressing reactions to achievements, bugs in the game, and the community's feature requests.
Firstly, I want to give everyone a huge heartfelt thanks for their support and kind words. Seeing HLL open on Steam to a generally warm and positive reaction is nothing short of relieving. It's made the entire team here at The Phoenix Project Software feel that we haven't shipped a pure piece of hot trash, so to speak. We are thrilled that people are enjoying our changes to the game and our additions. The goal of HLL is to bring Half-Life back to its original 1998 state, yet keep in modern refinements that don't get in the way of the late 90s vibe. I'd also like to give a congratulations to Dark Vector who, an hour before us, also saw a successful and positive launch of Half-Life Arena!
Additionally, before I continue to the grit of it, I want to clarify why we even released HLL on Steam in 2025.
This title was originally launched in February 2020 via ModDB as "Half-Life Classic," and essentially did what Half-Life's official 25th Anniversary Update ended up doing. As much as I like to say "ha, we had a three-year headstart," in Nov. 2023 we internally placed it in what we call a "dormant" state, meaning that we won't be committing to large-scale updates anymore, and will only issue 'emergency patches' if anything breaks down the line.
In late 2024, when we joined Steamworks as a publisher, to test the features that it offers like achievements, we used Half-Life Classic 1.3 as a test app. Then, we also had released the 1.4 update on ModDB just to bring in the HL25 UI support and classic intro video.
While working on Cross Product Multiplayer's 2.9.2 Steam Release update in the Spring of 2025, we looked back at Half-Life Legacy and thought "well, we put the effort in, we should release it with an extra coat of polish - there will be some people out there who will appreciate HL1 with achievements;" and thus, HLL 1.5 as you know it today was born.
Achievements
Rolling out today are going to be some immediate changes and clarifications to achievements in response to community feedback:
Got the Chills II is going to be removed. This is because we agree that achievements should generally be for what the player would have to make a genuine effort to go through, and this section is not one you can skip. We did make a lapse with this one. The first Got the Chills achievement will be staying as that is a section which is arguable easy to bypass.
Bye bye headhumpers is going to be lowered from 1,000 to 500. The reason is we have seen a lot of people in the community arguing that 1,000 is a little too much and in retrospect, I can agree. Our approach to adding this was the fact that the Headcrab is the single most common enemy in the game, but, on average since the launch of HLL, we have seen that people average on about 200-350 crabs killed. This was a pretty tough call to make because now that some people have got it, I don't want to discredit their efforts; however, I think that in the long run, it will have been the right decision.
Marathon's description has been clarified. I am personally not sure why, but we have seen quite a few people assuming it all had to be done in one play session. We have not programmed the achievement this way. It has been programmed to, at boot, check if you have all of the chapters, hazard course, and Uplink complete, and if so, achievement unlocks. We will be adding more "Marathon checks" throughout the game as current it only checks during boot-up, and this confused some people too. I will clarify just once again, that it does NOT have to be done in a specific order, and does NOT have to be done within one sitting.
Did I just do that? is going to be removed. I recognize that people feel some of our achievements come across a little uncreative, so I'm going to clarify why there is an achievement for, yes, pressing a button. It was simply a gag, as interactivity within the world was one of Half-Life's core innovations. However, we know now that these sorts of gags aren't the way to approach achievements. It's not like a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing, I can see in retrospect how it can come across as genuinely condescending to some players because it's such a simple function. Sorry about this.
Further down the pipeline in a soon-to-come 1.5.1 patch update, we have the following coming for you (subject to change):
More Explorer achievements are on the way, including one or two in Uplink.
A couple of Xen related achievements
Difficulty-tracked achievements (i.e. "beat X on Hard")
Overall, we're making efforts to make them feel more rewarding.
Bugs
In both the 1.5.1 patch, and the eventual 1.6 update in 2026, we are aiming to address the following bugs:
Lambda Core - scientist won't open the door in Level A - this bug also happens in OGHL, but we'll make an effort to fix it once and for all.
Speedometer position is unable to change
Controller vibrating when not being used
Vortigaunt-kill stat not counted correctly
...and whichever more bugs we find down the line.
New Features & Requests
We've really enjoyed reading everyone's requests for things to be added to Legacy. In the pipeline for the 1.5.1 patch, we hope to add:
A proper Adv. Options menu, not nested in the Multiplayer tab
HUD effects such as flashing when on low ammo etc, which will be OFF by default
UX improvements in Harbinger 2
EQ enhancements to the new music playback system, which on some players' sound systems can sound flat and "crunchy"
And in the pipeline for 1.6:
New complete sound system with EAX and surround sound support
In-game achievements menu
16:9 HUD safezone for ultrawide monitors
Chapter selection menu
Even harder fourth difficulty
We hope you continue to enjoy Legacy, and, can't wait to release the 1.5.1 patch for you all! No ETA for now, but it won't be long.
Thanks for playing!
Sabian
Co-founder of The Phoenix Project Software
2025-12-15
P.S. PLEASE stop sending developers friend requests. If you need to reach out, create a Discussion thread or join the Discord.