If you were quick on the draw with today's new UI update to Steam, you may have noticed something strange. In the new interface for browsing games, it now shows you the achievements a game can have in the information pane, as well as information on achievements you have earned. This is cool, and in the case of Half-Life 2 and Episode 1, it actually showed achievements specific to those games that were not there before.

Is this indicative of an update to the original Half-Life 2 and Episode 1? Achievements on the Steam network were finalized around the time Episode 2 released, so the original two Half-Life 2 games didn't have achievements built in (although they did have achievements in the Xbox 360 versions). Either way, for a brief while, Half-Life 2 displayed 33 potential achievements and Episode 1 displayed 13 potential achievements. They had icons not used in Episode 2 or any other Valve game on Steam, which indicates that the achievements were legitimate, even if you couldn't earn them. We've emailed Valve for comment on the potential new achievements.