Valve has released updates for the original Half-Life and Counter-Strike, offering some game changes and exploit fixes as outlined on the Steam news page.

The Steam website notes an engine update is now available for Half-Life 1. It fixes several exploits, and also changes the master server query protocol.

The final release of Natural Selection 3.0 is now available, offering a ton of changes over beta 5 (full changelog is here). You can find a mirror on FileShack.

Also on Computer Games Magazine's website today is a Q&A with Charlie Cleveland of Unknown Worlds. Version 3.0 of the company's Natural Selection mod for Half-Life is coming soon, and Ward also talks about NS: Source and the difficulties of running Unknown Worlds.

A new update for Steam has been released, updating both the application itself, the Source engine in general and the Half-Life 1 Dedicated Server. As always you have to restart Steam to get the update.

The guys at Unknown Worlds Entertainment have released the latest Natural Selection 3.0 beta, whicn you can grab from FileShack. The new release offers a ton of gameplay, cosmetic and other changes, adds two maps, and updates several older ones.

Over at Halflife2.net you can find two screenshots which show you what the Source engine port of Half-Life 1 will look like. The game hasn't been totally overhauled like Counter-Strike: Source, but HL1 on the Source Engine will still benefit from shader graphics, the physics and other new engine features.

We received an email from Valve, announcing that WON authentication servers will be shut down soon. After this operation is done (should be by July 31), you can no longer use of the online features of non-Steam Valve products, such as Counter-Strike 1.5. People who haven't already done so are encouraged to download Steam so they can continue to play.

Version 2.9 of the Firearms mod for Half-Life has been released, adding three new maps and two new weapons among other things. We have the Windows client and Linux server files mirrored on FileShack.

Valve sent along a note announcing that Codename Gordon is now available on Steam. Codename Gordon is a side scrolling game featuring levels inspired by Half-Life and Half-Life 2. You can find out more about the project at http://www.halflife2d.com/.

A new Natural Selection patch has been released, updating Beta 4 of the Half-Life action strategy mod to Beta 4a. The new release comes with several combat changes and bug fixes.

A new Natural Selection 3.0 upgrade has been released, updating the Half-Life mod to Beta 3. The new release has bug fixes, balance changes and map updates (changelog here). There's a dedicated server patch as well.

As noted on the official website, Beta 2 of the Natural Selection v3.0 release is now available. On FileShack we have a client patch as well as a dedicated server patch.

The long awaited version 3.0 release of the Natural Selection mod for Half-Life is out, offering new maps, new upgrades, an improved look and many other new features. We have the 155mb client file mirrored on FileShack.

Sven Co-op for Half-Life has just hit the big v3.0 release and is available via Steam if you're into that or you can just grab the full install from FileShack. There is also a v2.1 to v3.0 update available.