Planet Half-Life
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Type of site
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Gaming |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | IGN / GameSpy |
| Created by | Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen |
| Website | http://planethalflife.gamespy.com/ |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | April 27, 1999 |
| Current status | Inactive, last updated August 13, 2012 |
Planet Half-Life (often abbreviated to PHL) is a gaming website owned by IGN and its subsidiary GameSpy. Maintained by a voluntary team of contributors, the site is dedicated to providing news and information about Half-Life and Half-Life 2, related modifications and other Valve Software titles. It was founded by Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen and was at one point the largest of an array of GameSpy-run gaming websites known as the Planet Network. Following GameSpy's closure, Planet Half-Life seems to have ceased updating.
Planet Half-Life's content consisted mainly of a news wire on its front page. Stories on updates, patches, press releases and events related to Half-Life and just about anything else concerning Valve Software are posted on an almost daily basis. These stories are also mirrored in the site's forum for reader comments.
In addition to the news, Planet Half-Life hosts extensive, in-depth collections of information regarding Half-Life, Half-Life 2 (along with Portal), Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and Day of Defeat. These sections cover overviews of each game as well as any official expansion packs related to them, as well as going over their storylines, important characters, enemies, weapons, cheats, walkthroughs, and, in the case of the multiplayer games, map overviews and strategies. The information found on these pages is original work drafted by the staff writers and senior editors collectively (although without any individual credits given, unlike other articles found on the site).
A major feature of Planet Half-Life, and all other planet sites, is its public forum. These forums include boards ranging from general discussion to technical help.
In August 2007, the forums changed format to comply with GameSpy's ForumPlanet standard (the IGN SnowBoards system), removing some outdated features and adding many new ones, such as a dynamic news box that streams in late-breaking news from not only PHL, but all other planet sites as well. This also changed the registration process for the forum, from a per-planet account basis to a network-wide, global account basis. At this time Planet Half-Life's sister sites Planet Fortress and CS.net were officially unsupported and their forums were to be merged into PHL's, although this process lasted over a year before it was complete.
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