Following the overwhelmingly successful reception of Half-Life: Alyx, it seems that Valve is a little more confident in its long-dormant franchise.

Just like the Nintendo eShop, you’ll be able to collect points for all those games you’ll purchase and maybe grab something free once in a while.

All those diehard Dota 2 players have an excuse to log back into the game, play it for a week and then continue to not play it.

I’m not going to say that history tends to repeat itself, but two months for a complete reworking seems…optimistic.

For everyone who isn’t sold on the idea of spending thousands of rands on a headset just to play Half-Life, there’s a solution...kind of?

With Half-Life: Alyx done, Valve’s ready to give Artifact a second chance, ushering in changes that’ll shape a relaunch of the game. Called Artifact 2.0, Valve has plenty to tweak and tinker with, focusing on retooling the game to actually be worth sinking some time and effort into.

Half-Life 2’s episodic series was meant to flesh the world out further, to drive home the impact of the Combine and how humanity had been conquered by an insidious force. The right man in the right place at the right time could indeed make a difference, but after two episodes it looked like Gordon Freeman had lost his serendipitous talents.

Half-Life: Alyx was designed to be Valve’s flagship title for their Index VR system, but it looks like the game has gone above and beyond that goal to deliver VR’s killer app. Critics are raving, possibly frothing, and claiming that Valve just raised the benchmark for VR to ludicrous new heights. Here’s what they have to say.