Half-Life 2 is getting a VR mod, and it’s arriving in beta form this September.

Half-Life 2: VR, a headset version of the narrative FPS classic will begin its open beta on PC next month – but no specific date has been announced just yet.

“Good news, everyone!” said a statement from the Source VR Mod Team, which is making the mod. “The wait is nearly over - the Half-Life 2: VR public beta is launching in September. And yes, we do mean this year.”

The mod is currently undergoing a closed playtest. It runs on SteamVR, so any headset using the Steam platform can be used to play Half-Life 2: VR. It's been tested on the Index, Quest, Vive, and Pimax headsets.

Half-Life 2 is one of the most best-loved games of all time, revolutionizing the FPS genre and bringing a thrilling new chapter to the story of Gordon Freeman. Originally released in 2004, the game got an official VR sequel in the form of Half-Life: Alyx back in 2020.

Now, the previous game is making its way to SteamVR headsets thanks to the dedication of a mod team that’s been working on the project since 2017.

“Half-Life 2: VR was originally greenlit on Steam back in 2017,” explained the team. “It has since gone through its own kind of development hell and was all but abandoned. In July 2021, a new influx of team members has revitalized the project, and it is now close to actually being released to the public.”

The mod will be free to download but does require a copy of Half-Life 2 to play. At the moment, it’s unclear whether the mod will launch on Steam itself:

“We are still waiting for approval by Valve, and we do not know how much longer that will take,” the steam explained. “If our Store page gets approved by September, we will launch on Steam as planned. If not, we will prepare an alternative launch outside of Steam. Either way, we are excited to have you play the mod in September!”

Want to read more about Half-Life 2? Check out our review of the 2004 FPS classic and get some help with our full walkthrough.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

It looks as though The Golden Globes will be making a comeback on NBC.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the controversial awards will be returning to NBC after taking a year off the air.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which runs the awards, came under fire before the 79th annual ceremony when it was revealed that the HFPA included zero black people among its 87 members. It was also accused of unethical conduct and suspicious financial practices.

NBC later announced it would not air the 2022 awards due to the HFPA’s failure to reform its controversial business practices. The ceremony went ahead as a private, untelevised event, with The Power of the Dog taking the best movie drama prize, and West Side Story taking the best musical or comedy movie award.

“We continue to believe that the HFPA is committed to meaningful reform,” NBC said in a statement. “However, change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly that the HFPA needs time to do it right. As such, NBC will not air the 2022 Golden Globes. Assuming the organization executes on its plan, we are hopeful we will be in a position to air the show in January 2023.”

Worse still, former winner, Tom Cruise returned his three Golden Globes due to the controversy. He previously won Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for 1996's Jerry Maguire, Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for 1989's Born on the Fourth of July, and Best Supporting Actor for 1999's Magnolia.

Now, it sounds as though the Golden Globes are back with a return on January 10, 2023.

The Golden Globes have run every year since 1996, with the exception of last year. The return of the awards this year marks a significant moment for the HFPA which has passed major reforms since the cancellation of last year’s awards.

Members are now banned from accepting gifts and the HFPA has removed a cap on new members, allowing them to add 21 new members last year in order to improve diversity. However, even these changes come with some caveats.

None of the incumbent members were weeded out when accreditation standards were made stricter. The organization also angered many by still going ahead with the 2021 awards despite no stars attending or it being broadcast in any way.

Whether or not the HFPA has done enough to win over the public remains to be seen. But for now, at least, the Golden Globes are back. Which stars will attend the ceremony following the upheaval is another question entirely.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Thumbnail credit: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Hollywood Foreign Press Association

It looks as though The Golden Globes will be making a comeback on NBC.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the controversial awards will be returning to NBC after taking a year off the air.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which runs the awards, came under fire before the 79th annual ceremony when it was revealed that the HFPA included zero black people among its 87 members. It was also accused of unethical conduct and suspicious financial practices.

NBC later announced it would not air the 2022 awards due to the HFPA’s failure to reform its controversial business practices. The ceremony went ahead as a private, untelevised event, with The Power of the Dog taking the best movie drama prize, and West Side Story taking the best musical or comedy movie award.

“We continue to believe that the HFPA is committed to meaningful reform,” NBC said in a statement. “However, change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly that the HFPA needs time to do it right. As such, NBC will not air the 2022 Golden Globes. Assuming the organization executes on its plan, we are hopeful we will be in a position to air the show in January 2023.”

Worse still, former winner, Tom Cruise returned his three Golden Globes due to the controversy. He previously won Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for 1996's Jerry Maguire, Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for 1989's Born on the Fourth of July, and Best Supporting Actor for 1999's Magnolia.

Now, it sounds as though the Golden Globes are back with a return on January 10, 2023.

The Golden Globes have run every year since 1996, with the exception of last year. The return of the awards this year marks a significant moment for the HFPA which has passed major reforms since the cancellation of last year’s awards.

Members are now banned from accepting gifts and the HFPA has removed a cap on new members, allowing them to add 21 new members last year in order to improve diversity. However, even these changes come with some caveats.

None of the incumbent members were weeded out when accreditation standards were made stricter. The organization also angered many by still going ahead with the 2021 awards despite no stars attending or it being broadcast in any way.

Whether or not the HFPA has done enough to win over the public remains to be seen. But for now, at least, the Golden Globes are back. Which stars will attend the ceremony following the upheaval is another question entirely.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Thumbnail credit: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Hollywood Foreign Press Association

Hulu and 20th Century Studios are taking a victory lap for Prey after announcing that the Predator prequel is the most popular Hulu premiere of all time.

In a press release, Disney announced that Prey has broken Hulu’s records for the most-watched premiere for a single release, beating every other Hulu film and TV series.

In addition, Prey was the most watched film premiere on Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ in territories where Hulu is not available.

Disney does not provide hard data for its shows, but that’s a problem many streaming services share. Netflix releases hours viewed for both its movies and shows but only up until a certain time period and counts the data in very specific ways.

Prey was released straight to streaming on Hulu, bypassing a theatrical release despite being an official entry in the Predator franchise. However, that hasn’t stopped the film from garnering critical acclaim, including at IGN where our Prey review praised star Amber Midthunder’s “ferocious, star-making turn.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Prey was always planned as a direct-to-streaming movie and may have been helped by the release given the last Predator movie released in 2018 was a commercial disappointment.

Prey stars Midthunder as a member of the Comanche Nation in the 1700s. Alongside the Predator, Midthunder must prove to herself and her tribe that she is a capable hunter in her own right.

The film was directed by Dan Trachtenberg who previously directed 10 Cloverfield Lane and a massively viral Portal fan-film titled No Escape.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Hulu and 20th Century Studios are taking a victory lap for Prey after announcing that the Predator prequel is the most popular Hulu premiere of all time.

In a press release, Disney announced that Prey has broken Hulu’s records for the most-watched premiere for a single release, beating every other Hulu film and TV series.

In addition, Prey was the most watched film premiere on Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ in territories where Hulu is not available.

Disney does not provide hard data for its shows, but that’s a problem many streaming services share. Netflix releases hours viewed for both its movies and shows but only up until a certain time period and counts the data in very specific ways.

Prey was released straight to streaming on Hulu, bypassing a theatrical release despite being an official entry in the Predator franchise. However, that hasn’t stopped the film from garnering critical acclaim, including at IGN where our Prey review praised star Amber Midthunder’s “ferocious, star-making turn.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Prey was always planned as a direct-to-streaming movie and may have been helped by the release given the last Predator movie released in 2018 was a commercial disappointment.

Prey stars Midthunder as a member of the Comanche Nation in the 1700s. Alongside the Predator, Midthunder must prove to herself and her tribe that she is a capable hunter in her own right.

The film was directed by Dan Trachtenberg who previously directed 10 Cloverfield Lane and a massively viral Portal fan-film titled No Escape.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Lionsgate has used deepfake software on Fall to remove swearing.

The upcoming action thriller starring Grace Caroline Currey, and Virginia Gardner was apparently full of f-bombs… and with Lionsgate desperate for a PG-13 rating, the filmmakers used deepfake to get rid of all that swearing.

“For a movie like this, we can’t reshoot it,” director Scott Mann said in a behind-the-scenes video feature and reported by Variety. “We’re not a big tentpole… we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the time, more than anything else. What really saved this movie and brought it into a wider audience was technology.”

The solution, Mann said, was turning to the London-based AI company, Flawless, where he also serves as co-CEO… and presumably already had a good idea of what the technology could do.

“When we were filming the movie, we didn’t know if we were R or if we were PG-13, so I said the F-word so many times I think Scott wanted to kill me in post when we were trying to get a PG-13 rating,” said co-star Virginia Gardner.

It’s easy to see how those f-bombs could end up in there – Fall tells the story of two women who climb an abandoned radio tower to scatter the ashes of one of their husbands, but when sections of the ladder fall loose, the pair become stranded.

According to Mann, the team edited out more than 30 f-bombs throughout the movie – changing the film’s rating from R-rated to a PG-13. Many of the film’s most egregious curses were changed to teen-appropriate ones such as “freaking”.

“As far as I know, every movement my mouth made in that movie, my mouth made,” said Grace Caroline Currey.

The TrueSync software used by Mann was originally designed to improve dubbing when translating films into other languages. It uses technology similar to other deepfake-style software, altering the mouth movements to sync to new alternative dialogue.

Fall was made on a budget of just $3 million, meaning that reshooting pivotal scenes to reduce the film’s rating was simply not an option. Additionally, the reshoots would have taken months to get done.

The TrueSync edits were made in just two weeks, during the final stage of post-production.

Whether or not we see deepfakes used in other creative ways remains to be seen, but South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker almost made their very own deep fake movie starring not-the=former-president Donald Trump.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Lionsgate has used deepfake software on Fall to remove swearing.

The upcoming action thriller starring Grace Caroline Currey, and Virginia Gardner was apparently full of f-bombs… and with Lionsgate desperate for a PG-13 rating, the filmmakers used deepfake to get rid of all that swearing.

“For a movie like this, we can’t reshoot it,” director Scott Mann said in a behind-the-scenes video feature and reported by Variety. “We’re not a big tentpole… we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the time, more than anything else. What really saved this movie and brought it into a wider audience was technology.”

The solution, Mann said, was turning to the London-based AI company, Flawless, where he also serves as co-CEO… and presumably already had a good idea of what the technology could do.

“When we were filming the movie, we didn’t know if we were R or if we were PG-13, so I said the F-word so many times I think Scott wanted to kill me in post when we were trying to get a PG-13 rating,” said co-star Virginia Gardner.

It’s easy to see how those f-bombs could end up in there – Fall tells the story of two women who climb an abandoned radio tower to scatter the ashes of one of their husbands, but when sections of the ladder fall loose, the pair become stranded.

According to Mann, the team edited out more than 30 f-bombs throughout the movie – changing the film’s rating from R-rated to a PG-13. Many of the film’s most egregious curses were changed to teen-appropriate ones such as “freaking”.

“As far as I know, every movement my mouth made in that movie, my mouth made,” said Grace Caroline Currey.

The TrueSync software used by Mann was originally designed to improve dubbing when translating films into other languages. It uses technology similar to other deepfake-style software, altering the mouth movements to sync to new alternative dialogue.

Fall was made on a budget of just $3 million, meaning that reshooting pivotal scenes to reduce the film’s rating was simply not an option. Additionally, the reshoots would have taken months to get done.

The TrueSync edits were made in just two weeks, during the final stage of post-production.

Whether or not we see deepfakes used in other creative ways remains to be seen, but South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker almost made their very own deep fake movie starring not-the=former-president Donald Trump.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker almost made a Donald Trump deepfake movie.

During an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the duo revealed that their first film after 2004’s Team America was almost a full-length deepfake mocking the former president.

“It’s sort of on hold,” said Parker. “It was very timely and the timeliness of it has passed. We’d have to majorly rethink it to do it now.”

The full-length Donald Trump deepfake would have starred Peter Serafinowicz voicing Trump, exactly as he did in Stone and Parker’s viral deepfake video, “Sassy Justice”.

The video was an unexpected hit, featuring then-president Trump reporting news out of Cheyenne, Wyoming under the name, Sassy Justice.

“It was going to be Deep Fake: The Movie,” explained Parker. “It was about this guy who looked exactly like Trump because we deep fake Trump’s face onto him. And it was this whole funny thing because, of course, it ends up with Trump just naked and getting run through the wringer and everything, and that’s why it was so funny and so timely.”

“Even though the script was sort of timely, we ended up keeping the deep fake part of the studio going,” added Stone.

After the film fell through, Stone and Parker kept the project going on a smaller scale, creating the short video “Sassy Justice” that went viral during the pandemic. It was essentially the first content to come out of Deep Voodoo – Stone and Parker’s deepfake studio.

“We were going to start shooting on the day that the pandemic shut everything down. It was months and months of getting ready for that movie, to just being like, ‘Nope, it’s over.’ I went to the office to start packing up my things because I was just kind of in shock.”

Unfortunately, it sounds as though the movie has been all but scrapped… sort of.

“I don’t know,” said Stone when asked if it could eventually see the light of day. “[Trump] could be running again.”

If Trump does run for office in 2024, expect the South Park duo to rethink the return of Sassy Justice.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Photo by Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker almost made a Donald Trump deepfake movie.

During an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the duo revealed that their first film after 2004’s Team America was almost a full-length deepfake mocking the former president.

“It’s sort of on hold,” said Parker. “It was very timely and the timeliness of it has passed. We’d have to majorly rethink it to do it now.”

The full-length Donald Trump deepfake would have starred Peter Serafinowicz voicing Trump, exactly as he did in Stone and Parker’s viral deepfake video, “Sassy Justice”.

The video was an unexpected hit, featuring then-president Trump reporting news out of Cheyenne, Wyoming under the name, Sassy Justice.

“It was going to be Deep Fake: The Movie,” explained Parker. “It was about this guy who looked exactly like Trump because we deep fake Trump’s face onto him. And it was this whole funny thing because, of course, it ends up with Trump just naked and getting run through the wringer and everything, and that’s why it was so funny and so timely.”

“Even though the script was sort of timely, we ended up keeping the deep fake part of the studio going,” added Stone.

After the film fell through, Stone and Parker kept the project going on a smaller scale, creating the short video “Sassy Justice” that went viral during the pandemic. It was essentially the first content to come out of Deep Voodoo – Stone and Parker’s deepfake studio.

“We were going to start shooting on the day that the pandemic shut everything down. It was months and months of getting ready for that movie, to just being like, ‘Nope, it’s over.’ I went to the office to start packing up my things because I was just kind of in shock.”

Unfortunately, it sounds as though the movie has been all but scrapped… sort of.

“I don’t know,” said Stone when asked if it could eventually see the light of day. “[Trump] could be running again.”

If Trump does run for office in 2024, expect the South Park duo to rethink the return of Sassy Justice.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Photo by Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images

Blizzard has announced when loot boxes will be phased out of Overwatch in anticipation of the new Battle Pass system.

The announcement was quietly mentioned in a blog post about the Overwatch Anniversary Remix Volume 3 event. The company confirmed that the loot boxes would "no longer be available for sale" come August 30th.

However, the post notes that you'll still be able to earn standard loot boxes after the Remix event.

This Anniversary Remix event is Blizzard's way of "cleaning house" of sorts, allowing players to earn (or buy) cosmetics before Overwatch 2 launches on October 4, 2022. This includes skins and cosmetics from previous Overwatch Challenge events.

Players will also be able to participate in "brawls" and relive certain game types such as past story missions such as Uprising and Storm Rising and past Summer Games modes like Lucioball.

Blizzard formally announced that loot boxes were going away in June, replacing them with a battle pass and in-game store. The company said they wanted to give players "a lot more control over how they interact with the game and acquire new content."

Loot boxes have long been a controversial subject in the gaming industry. Games such as Overwatch, Call of Duty, and EA Sports franchises have been criticized for their monetization methods. Additionally, there have been links found between loot boxes and gambling.

Fortunately, it seems Blizzard wants to get away from those tactics and stick with a more fair method of dolling out skins and cosmetics (maybe). In fact, Blizzard confirmed that all unopened loot boxes in Overwatch will automatically open before the launch of Overwatch 2.

Overwatch 2 releases this year on October 4th and will completely replace the original Overwatch. Check out the major differences between the original game and the sequel.

David Matthews is a freelance writer specializing in consumer tech and gaming. He also strongly believes that sugar does not go in grits. Follow him on Twitter @packetstealer