The flurry of activity for the day culminated with a Steam forum post from Valve's Jess Cliffe and in a news release that Deathmatch was actually available, along with the previously announced SDK, via Steam. Since that post, the Steam forums "are temporarily offline."


Details on the Steam update:

Half-Life 2: Deathmatch

New multiplayer game featuring physics simulation system

Half-Life 2/Source SDK

Includes game code needed to create Half-Life 2/Source MODs

New Half-Life 2 sample character model

Ability to edit Half-Life 2 maps

Maya model exporter

3d Studio Max model exporter source code

Sample MOD with vehicles

Source Updates

HTTP and non-HTTP map auto downloading functionality

Enhanced dedicated server logging capabilities

Various tweaks and fixes

Also: A Half-Life 2: Deathmatch Map Making Contest has been announced. The winning entry will receive a cash prize of $5,000. Two runner up entries will receive a cash prize of $3,000.

Ever since its initial release, many people have complained that one of the few flaws Half-Life has, is the lack of any real multiplayer.

While Counter-Strike Source was a welcome "update" of the five-year-old multiplayer mod, Half-Life 2 shipped to stores without any real new online aspect to the game, although Valve promised very vaguely there would be a "community surprise" coinciding with the release of the SDK. We now have the surprise.

We'll have more details as they become available.