After 27 years, a gamer managed to activate a Half-Life key on Steam

The old key turned out to be working, and the gamer was able to add it to his Steam library.

Recently, a gamer found out that the "shelf life" of a digital key can be several decades.

A user with the nickname Frostychill123 shared in the Steam community that he was given an original PC copy of Half-Life (on disc). He found the code and became curious: he opened the client and tried to activate the found key.

The result pleasantly surprised the gamer — after 27 years, Valve's service accepted the code, and he received the iconic shooter Half-Life and several other company games in his Steam collection.

One of the discussion participants noted that Portal 2 keys still work to this day:

Steam keys are an important element in the collector community. Some video games are removed from sale on Steam, but the keys are usually not deactivated — which is why they are highly sought after.

For some licensed games, like Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, keys can fetch several thousand dollars (over 150,000 rubles) on the black market today.