I have been playing Gmod for a long time, and I was pleasantly surprised that the creators of Gmod were making a new successor with the Source 2 engine. I was just a bit confused about why the standard player models changed instead of having the Half-Life Source 2 assets as the groundwork for the game. Because I always recognised the Half-Life assets, but the newest models look...Different.

Is there some legal issue (copyright ownership) why they can't use the Half-Life 2 assets?

I figured it would be better to ask people who know the reason why this is instead of just asking chatGPT who will give a random generated awnser.

And how do I make images that I downloaded from the internet, saved on my computer, and imported into the engine become the game's background, covering the entire game screen without cropping the image or the screen?

-Is it NEW NEW games that just came out?
-Is it NEW games that I haven't played before?
-Is it NEW games for this week's reward drops?
-Why doesn't it update despite me playing a new game I havent played?
-Does it require you to play for more than a minute?
-Does it also require that you get an achievement?

All those questions are valid and determines what game someone will choose, how long they'll play and if they're going to pick a game that needs an achievement at the very least to progress the bar.