Beloved Half-Life zombie mod finally comes to Steam 22 years after it debuted

Are any of you old enough (or Half-Life-obsessed enough) to remember Zombie Panic? One of the original, Infected-style PvP experiences that no doubt inspired similar modes in the likes of Halo and Call of Duty, it put a team of single-life, gun-toting survivors against a rival team of zombies with unlimited respawns. Should a survivor die, they become a zombie and join the other team. While a Source engine sequel has been around for a while on Steam, the original Zombie Panic mod has been absent from Valve's platform for 22 years - until now.

Zombie Panic first arrived on the scene in 2004, transforming one of the best FPS games ever into a hilarious, survival horror-infused spinoff mode. A Source version for Half-Life 2 arrived three years later, and the team behind it has been peppering it with updates ever since. Last year, it also saw an unprecedented spike in players. However, despite the support and love for Zombie Panic Source, the modders behind it recently revealed plans to bring the original Half-Life version, running on the GoldSrc engine, to Steam. Now, that mission is complete.

"We wish to thank everyone who has contributed and playtested the mod over the past year, providing it with lots of new content, feedback and fixes that helped us shape this 1.0 Steam release," the modders say in an announcement post. "There are many old maps restored (official and community-made) available to play on the Steam Workshop, brand-new characters and weapon types with fresh models, additional mapping entities-tools, improved fatigue and inventory system, updated UI/UX, and more!"

It does inform players that the voice lines used in Zombie Panic are currently placeholders plucked from the Source version, but it plans to replace these in future updates.

The Zombie Panic team is also keen to assure that its work to re-release the GoldSrc version of the mod doesn't impact the rollout of future updates for Zombie Panic Source. A sole modder, 'JonnyBoy', is responsible for bringing ZP to Steam, with everyone else still focused on ZPS.

Before you get too excited, let me remind you that you will still need the Half-Life base game to play Zombie Panic, despite the mod itself being free to download. Given Valve's classic is typically ten bucks or less, depending on sales, and there are no doubt thousands (if not millions) of you with Half-Life already in your Steam library, that shouldn't be too much of a barrier. Team Zombie Panic has also made sure that it's now compatible with the 25th Anniversary update to the base game that has been causing problems for the mod ever since it rolled out a couple of years ago, so it should be a fairly bug and crash-free experience.