Steam concurrent records are quite fickle. One small update or free-to-play weekend and a relatively old or dead game could suddenly have hundreds of thousands of players online at the same time. Even a game as old as Half-Life 2. That’s right, Half-Life 2 shattered it’s concurrent players record yesterday, thanks to a fan driven initiative.
As spotted by Eurogamer, the ‘Breaking the Bar’ challenge was driven by YouTubers Radiation Hazard and noclick. It asked people to log onto Half-Life 2 on August 14, 2021, in order to break the game’s concurrent player record of 6,882 on Steam Charts and 12,953 on SteamDB. Radiation Hazard claimed that the SteamDB record was set around the time Half-Life Alyx launched and the Steam Charts one was set during a fan campaign to get Valve to disclose more information about the Half-Life series.
Well, August 14 came and went, and the ‘Break the Bar’ challenge was a success. As of yesterday, the all-time high concurrent player count for Half-Life 2 on Steam Charts is 14,378 while that of SteamDB sits at 16,101.
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While we’re probably not getting Half-Life 3, we will soon be getting Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection, a fan project that aims to revamp the base game and the two episodes visually and performance wise as well. Valve and Steam reporter Tyler McVicker corroborated the news as well, “According to SteamDB, the team that brought us Half-Life 2: Update is working on a further update and remaster of HL2 & the Episodes, with Valve’s consent. The Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection is coming soon to Steam,” tweeted McVicker. “I have been able to confirm this projects [sic] legitimacy, being made by the former Half-Life 2: Update team.”
The Remastered Collection is the next evolution of Half-Life 2 Update, a fan project created by modder Filip Victor. This project launched in 2015 and reworked the original game’s lighting system, fog, particle effects, fixed numerous bugs, and also added in a Community Commentary Mode.
As of now, Valve will be solely focussed on the Steam Deck. Valve product designers Tucker Spofford and Greg Coomer recently discussed that there are tons of opportunities for different colours for the console.
NEXT: Interview: Valve On Why Half-Life Alyx Could Only Be Made In VR
