Barney Calhoun, der Protagonist aus Half-Life: Blue Shift.
Half-Life: Blue Shift, the second expansion for the groundbreaking shooter Half-Life, set a new player record last weekend at Steam The add-on was released in 2001, i.e. 23 years ago.
More than 3,100 users played the game simultaneously on Valve’s platform. For comparison: The previous record was 420 players at the same time. But this new player record didn’t come out of nowhere; the community helped a little.
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Via X (formerly Twitter), fans of the game called for an action on August 24th. Players worldwide were then to help break the player record on Steam. The campaign was under the motto #shiftingthebarTranslated, the motto reads something like this: Raising the barAt the same time, bar could also be translated as crowbar – after all, the iconic weapon in Half-Life.
The event was organized by the LambdaGeneration
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However, the all-time high was only maintained for a short time. Now (as of August 26th) there are only fewer than 50 Steam users playing Half-Life: Blue Shift at the same time – a similar situation was observed before the record attempt. This may be due to the age of the game or its quality.
Criticism of the 2001 release
Because at the time of release there was some criticism of Blue ShiftIn contrast to the main game Half-Life or its first expansion, Opposing Force, Blue Shift was not entirely convincing. The reasons were the outdated graphics and a short playing time of just under five hours.
There are also no new weapons or enemy types. We rated the add-on at the time with a 78 and called Blue Shift a “fun Half-Life sequel” in our test. For comparison: We rated the basic Half-Life game at the time with a 92.
You can see what influence Half-Life had and how we rated the game 20 years later in this video:
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Blue Shift certainly had potential. At least we see the events in the Black Mesa research complex through the eyes of a security guard. Up until now, the security personnel at Black Mesa had only been there to open doors and provide fire support.
Barney Calhoun, the protagonist of Blue Shift, now at least gave the nameless guards a face. The fact that the add-on feels a bit bloodless despite the promising premise is certainly related to the story of its creation.
The add-on was originally planned as a bonus campaign for the Dreamcast version of Half-Life. However, this version never appeared. Instead, Blue Shift was released for the PC.
Nevertheless, the expansion has a loyal following. A few years ago, fans announced that they wanted to develop a remake of Blue Shift.
With millions of players using Steam every day, 3,100 is obviously a tiny number – especially since thousands of new games are released on the platform every year. But some titles manage to attract hundreds of thousands of players on a regular basis.
You can find a top 10 list of games with the highest number of players in the link box above. There you will also find an article about the player record on Steam, which was broken in spring 2024.
