Frequently Asked Questions

Metrocop is a website of content about the Half-Life series of videogames originally created by Valve Corporation. Currently, that content is distributed between articles on topics related to Half-Life and Valve, and an archive of comics created with Valve’s proprietary search engine Source, albeit a vast majority of the comics are also created with the videogame Garry’s Mod by Facepunch Studios, also running on Source.

Metrocop is also a community of like-minded fans of the aforementioned topics, which you can meet up with on the forums or the site’s Discord server.

Nope! We’re a fan-made website, through and through. Though we certainly like to be noticed by Valve, we aren’t getting paid by them or anything. It’s a labor of love.

That’s a very specific question. Are you a cop?

Kidding aside, no. We’re not a company, just a fan site. If anything, we’d consider ourselves “non-profit”, as we’re not in this for the money. That said, we do have a Patreon page to help support maintenance and server costs.

Oh, and Valve? Please don’t sue us. We love you.

Excellent question! No, we do not, at least at the time of writing this. But hopefully we will never have to even consider it.

We know how annoying ads can be, and although we’d like to at least cover the costs of running this site, we’re not looking to sacrifice user experience for the sake of monetization. This is a website for fun, ours and the readers’, and that means keeping it ad-free.

Hopefully, if and when we have a means of getting support from readers, you will consider this and help us keep the lights on.

We have a privacy policy for that kind of question, but the short, non-legalese answer is: no, we’re not collecting your data for marketing purposes. We do use analytics software, but it’s just to check how the site is doing and we try and anonymize you the best we can.

Yes, and we’re happy you asked!

We have a Patreon page where you can pledge to support Metrocop’s costs, with three different tiers and exclusive perks if you help us keep the site running.

Beyond that, you can show support for Metrocop in a variety of ways that will help us grow, including:

• Adding thoughtful and friendly comments on posts and comics;
• Sharing our work on social media;
• Joining our Discord server and helping keep it active, engaging and friendly.

Yes, we do! However, don’t just send us the finished article hoping it will get published. Get in touch through the contact form and tell us about your ideas for articles and, if you have any, some examples of your prior work. We’ll see how we hit it off first, then consider you for guest authorship depending on how it goes.

Also, bear in mind this is voluntary work, i.e. not a paid gig. Sorry.

Absolutely, but please bear in mind we reserve the right of choosing whether or not to publish it, as well as when to publish it (if we say yes). Use the contact form to get in touch.

We appreciate the interest, but we would rather you don’t.

While we will discuss general-knowledge topics such as the theft of Half-Life 2’s beta in 2003, and may discuss leaked content by other sources if they, too, become general knowledge, we don’t want to leak anything ourselves, out of respect for Valve Corporation and the hard-working people there.

This moral high ground will become really tough to maintain if you send us proof of Half-Life 3 being in the works, so please just don’t send us anything! We won’t even open it.

No. That’s plagiarism. Very bad.

Yes, but please make sure to attribute Metrocop as the source. A link back to the original content would also be nice.

Not directly, no. The Metrocop comics archive is a curated list, meaning each series is manually selected, organized and added to the archive. However, you can contact the Metrocop team suggesting we upload your comic, but be forewarned that it is up to us to accept it. See the criteria below and please don’t take it personally.

Alternatively, you can freely share your comics directly on the Metrocop forums, in the “Comics” section.

We have a few basic criteria we try to consider, to the best of our ability, upon being sent someone’s works for consideration. What follows is a basic summary of them:

• Quality: the higher your comics’ quality, the more likely they are to get into the archive. “Quality” is a fickle metric to measure because it’s so biased, but it mostly applies to scripting, posing, editing and, if your comic is a comedy, humor. Tying into the other points, if your series has weaker installments at first but you already show progress in the subsequent episodes, that will also be noted;
• Longevity / length: longer-running series, and/or series with plenty of issues/episodes/chapters, have better likelihood of being considered compared with shorter series, although we do not frown on the latter (with one exception, which you’ll find below). This also applies if you mostly make one-off comics and have plenty of those;
• Historical significance: classic and beloved comic series from older eras (i.e.. 2005⁠–2009) are appreciated even if they may not fit every other standard, though not every old comic can be considered a “classic” — once again, it is a highly subjective point and we reserve the right to judge it as we want;
• Your reputation: by which we don’t mean that you have to be well-known to make it into the archive, but rather that if you have a bad reputation online (e.g. abusive behavior, trolling, hate speech), this will be a major impediment to your works being collected;
• Previous presence on the archive: if you already are a featured author on the Metrocop comics archive and create new comics, whether they are for an existing series or a new one, your new comics won’t take much consideration to be added as well.

You should also note that we have a loose minimum of comics we want to see for a series or author’s works before adding it to the archive. This is just because we know from experience that the majority of series isn’t followed upon after a few episodes, mostly due to new authors getting bored, and we’d rather not fill the archive with one- or two-episode series. How many comics we’ll consider acceptable as a minimum depends on the type of comic, e.g. a comedy series with shorter episodes should have at least 5⁠–10 episodes before adding to the archive, whereas a dramatic series with longer chapters may just need ⁠3–5 to be accepted.

It should be noted that you will most likely find exceptions to all of these criteria in the archive, particularly since the bulk of it was added prior to the 2021 relaunch, when these topics were more formalized for everyone’s benefit.

We understand that these criteria are subjective, but we hope you can accept that when/if you submit your works. If you cannot, best not submit them, then, and spare everyone the trouble.

You’ll notice the site’s contact form doesn’t have an option to upload files. That’s by design, not a mistake.

Here’s how it goes: preferably, you’ll tell us first about your comics on a first contact, then if we’re intrigued we’ll ask for more. You can also upload a few samples somewhere, such as Imgur, Google Drive or Dropbox, and put a link to them on your first e-mail’s body text, but it’s not mandatory.

Alternatively, you could upload your entire collection on a file sharing platform such as Megaupload, but, again, we would prefer you approach us first to talk about it before sending the comics directly.

That’s a tricky one. For the most part, Metrocop doesn’t exactly own these comics — much less the trademarks and copyright for the assets used in them, which are mostly from copyrighted materials such as videogames, primarily Half-Life 2.

That said, we have asked their respective authors for permission to host them, and that permission doesn’t necessarily imply a third party can do the same. So, we ask that you do not reupload these without permission unless specifically stated (e.g. the comic series Apostasy includes a “Please distribute freely” note on each comic, so, by all means, redistribute away).

Ideally, if your idea is digital preservation — which we obviously agree with —, the most helpful and least complicated thing you can do for Metrocop is save the site’s pages and files as they are in the Wayback Machine. We also do not mind if you save them up in your device or back them up to an external drive for your own reading enjoyment.

As a rule of thumb, most likely yes, but it depends on which comic and which author.

If it’s a comic from a series that is already hosted on Metrocop, but the comic was lost and therefore isn’t currently available on Metrocop, by all means, yes, you’ll be helping us out a lot.

If it’s a comic from an author that is already hosted on Metrocop, but the series itself is not present here, it could be because the author didn’t want it on the site, we opted not to host it or the series itself was lost. In that case, please do reach out, as well.

If it’s a lost comic or series from another author, we will not host it unless we get permission from the author; however, let us know and we will try to reach out to said author. Perhaps we already have but the comics were gone, hence why you telling us first is relevant.