Crikey, Half-Life 2 just turned 20 this week, but despite that, and even thanks to that, it just hit a new peak number of concurrent players.
Look, we all know that Half-Life 2 is one of the greatest games ever made. I haven’t even played it yet and I know it! That’s true, but it’s also pretty old now, and while it has a lot of fans, not a lot of people play it every day. That’s the case for now, though, as a major new update was released just this week, bringing a ton of improvements and compiling episodes one and two into the base game. Not only that, but the base game also gets brand new developer commentary, providing some behind-the-scenes footage of one of the most iconic games. Do you know what such an update does? Obviously, a whole bunch of players were brought in.
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As seen on SteamDB, a tracking site that lets you see various insights for various games, Half-Life 2 peaked at 63,636 concurrent players (love palindromic numbers), which is what the game the highest level in history. As of this writing, this actually happened 12 minutes ago, and is only slightly less common in the game than it is now.
That’s a ridiculously impressive number for such an old game, and these are probably numbers you’d see for online play in quieter times, but clearly updates like this have put fans out of the woods. Presumably some new players are joining in too, because until tomorrow you can grab the game for free to celebrate its 20th anniversary.
Not only is there a major new update, but there’s also an entire feature-length documentary that’s well worth watching if you’re a long-time fan of Valve and all of its games – it even takes a look at what’s in the game, Half-Life 2 :Episode 3″ could have been (just don’t take this as confirmation that it will eventually happen).
