Half-Life 2 Smashes Its All-time Peak 20 Years After Its Release

Back when Valve used to develop and publish games (in the eras when we made jokes about their inability to count to three), Half-Life 2 dropped. On the 16th of November 2004, this gem of the past was one of Valve's schemed to bring new people into Steam, as — at the time — the only way to play the game was to get the then-obscure launcher.

Of course, we know how that story ended: Steam became the behemoth that it is today, even competing against modern-day consoles in the handheld department with its Steam Deck. And as a testament of that growth, Half-Life 2 celebrated its 20th anniversary by giving copies free-to-keep for a limited time... and then promptly smashing its concurrent player peak.

And it's not even close.

Half-Life 2's all-time peak has had a bit of a history. The ever-reliable source for all things information regarding Steam, Steamdb, has information about the game dating only back to 2008, which was a few years after its release. Still, the highest peaks kept coming at later times, starting first in 2010, which saw a record of 5,507 players seemingly randomly, with no previous event tied to this peak. Only two days later, would the all-time peak be established for a very long time.

2012 saw the release of A Red Letter Day community event. Interestingly, though you might expect this to be an official event, that wasn't the case — instead, this event saw a call-to-action where players asked everyone to join in and play Half-Life 2 to celebrate it and hopefully bring it to the top ten games played for that day.

Obviously, this was a success, as on the 4th of February, Half-Life 2 reached an all-time peak of 12,953 players that wouldn't be beaten for 10 years, even with a beta weekend in 2020 that brought in some numbers, but nothing in contrast to the community event prior.

The final all-time peak before 2024s would be on the 14th of August, nearly 10 whole years after A Red Letter Day, and once again, it was community-led. In a beautiful show of loyalty, Breaking the Bar had streamers and players join from all around the world, getting 16,101 players to join the cause (though, ironically, only a month later, a free beta weekend released again, which could've shot up those numbers).

Finally, came the 16th of November. Players got to keep the game to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2. Seeing a brand-new all-time peak that wasn't even close, the free-to-keep event reached 52,029 players at a time. It'll be a wonder if Half-Life 2 ever sees a peak any higher, as it secured its spot on the 330th most-All-Time-peak game of all time, below Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and HITMAN and the 34th most-All-Time-peak over the last 24 hours.