I was thinking of getting out my old XP desktop to play old games and forgot Steam will not work on XP anymore. I still have another XP machine with Steam on it and will not let me get into the Library as it keeps wanting to update and not load.

So I was thinking of contacting Valve to see if they could sell or someone else can contact, Half-Life on GOG and after all it is a good old game.

Was wanting

(Windows 98 Era)
Half-Life 1
Half-Life 1 Source
Half-Life Blue Shift
Half-Life Opposing Force
Hal-Life Decay (PS2 Only mini story)

(Windows XP Era)
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 Episode 1
Half-Life 2 Episode 2
Half-Life 2 Lost Coast (Mini Level)

I will buy ALL these if Valve would release them on GOG.
They don't have to release Half-Life Alyx.
I do own all of these in physical big box but the HL2 versions will not run without Steam being installed and steam doesn't work on Windows XP anymore.
I just would love to have the backup files of all these and be able to play these on my old machines again.

Finding those versions.. old discs mostly will help.
the rest.. idk man... good luck.

i don't even think valve kept those.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/my_question_should_valve_games_be_on_gog

See also.
Addendum: You do realize that you are asking a direct competitor of GOG to sell their flagship title on the rival store, right?

good games

Not gonna happen, but maybe it's DRM-free on Steam so you could move the files over. Or Maybe you could find some ISOs "somewhere" online.

GOG releases are intended to be played on modern PCs anyway, so you might just want to just use old CDs, ISOs, etc.

correct i often have to search for older versions online in order to have my retro machine running.
just remember to at least buy the games to support the devs.

There is a high chance the GOG versions wouldn't work on XP either, as they would be obviously optimized for Windows 10 and 11.

Is there some specific reason you want to play those old games on some old cranky Windows XP desktop, and not some newer machine? I do have a couple of very old PCs but they are specifically for certain old games that I can't easily get to run on modern PCs.

Other games, old or new, I rather play on some of my more modern laptops.

sometimes it's fun to boot up retro tech and make it work.
sometimes it's all you got.

To be fair, GOG isn't really much of a rival for them. I wouldn't expect them to actually do it in a thousand years, but it's not like releasing Half-Life here would put a dent in Steam's business. I'm pretty sure most "no water vapour no buy" people wouldn't jump ship even if GOG had Half-Life 3 as an exclusive.

That's exactly when they would jump ship to GOG. That's also exactly how they signed up to Steam in the first place with HL2.

That's how they signed up there, but now that they are hooked I doubt anything could change it. Besides, today there's plenty of "no water vapour no buy" people who weren't even born when Half-Life 2 released, they never even played it since it's so ancient to them, and all they know of PC gaming is Steam and maybe Epic because of Fortnite.

Point is, Valve has nothing to lose by releasing something old like Half-Life on GOG, because GOG is not and never will be a threat to them.

Not gonna happen, as GOG is a kind of competitor, even if just a minor one.

In any case, last I checked, several of the Valve games are what is called DRM-Free Lite. That means, with a simple fix you can play them without the Steam Client, once you used that to download them or used SteamCMD the command-line version of their client.

I won't paste any links here, but a quick search will get you the list of Steam Games that are deemed DRM-Free or were at some point. They usually don't require much of a fix, just maybe a specific named text file to be in the root folder of the game. All their games last I checked, were available in the Valve Collection, and the DLCs could be added or in some cases automatically are. That said though, whether those versions will still work on Win XP is another matter.

If the OP has them installed already, then they may be in luck, and can possibly implement the DRM-Free fixes for some of them.

While not a big threat in any way, they are still a threat or a thorn in their side I imagine. So highly unlikely they would want to have their games here, and thus give some kind of support for GOG.

There are a lot of gamers, a very small number compared to Steam customers for sure, but I reckon significant enough, who would be forced to spend money at Steam or go without, if not for GOG. So I seriously doubt Steam would want to jump on the GOG wagon, and encourage others to do so too.

cough, cough, webarchive, cough