Sven Co-Op heads free-to-play to Steam after near-15 years of development

The gamer-created unofficial Half-Life modification Sven Co-Op has been announced to be going fully official (Steam game official, that is) this week by its makers. What this means for you, the lay person, is that you'll be seeing this game available inside Steam for free – downloadable and playable – where before today – and for the past 14 years or so – you'd have had to have downloaded it and loaded it yourself attached to the original game. Now it's all on its own and going big with help from the Steam team!

This modification to the classic person-vs-person shooting game has been rolling out updates for years now, with the newest edition acting as a great jump-off point for those looking to understand the draw. In the newest update's user manual you'll find weapons and characters from the human world you're familiar with, but the monstrous Sven reality as well – Spore launchers and Stukabats and Kingpins, oh my!

Basically this game takes on the skeleton and the brain of the original Half-Life game and takes it to an alternate dimension where monsters roam free. Have a peek at a demonstration of what Sven Co-Op brings the world of Half-Life here courtesy of coopcrowd:

The Valve Corporation have now officially – for real, this time – granted the developers behind Sven Co-Op access to the original game's engine for the creation of this cooperative game. The game will be one in which players must continue to work together to solve puzzles in both odd locations and time periods aplenty.

• The next version of Sven Co-op will run as a standalone game using a custom build of the Half-Life engine.

• The game will be FREE for all Steam users, including the official Half-Life campaign (for 2+ player co-op play). A Half-Life purchase will not be required.

• Automatic updates will be available using Steam's content delivery system dubbed SteamPipe. This will allow us to perform more frequent and rapid updates as needed.

• Updates and new features will be added to the Half-Life engine, as well as a series of improvements to Half-Life's level editor called Hammer.

• Increased Half-Life engine limits to allow for much larger and more detailed worlds.

• Stability, performance, and gameplay improvements for everyone.

You can expect this update to come to Steam SOON. At the moment we're not clear on an exact date, but we'll keep you informed without a doubt!

VIA: Sven Co-Op