'Half-Life' Hits All Time High Player Count Two Decades After Release

So, the original Half-Life game released in 1998 - making it 24 years old in November. All that time on, and despite its critical acclaim, and there’s still no Half-Life 3. Will it ever exist? Who knows. But as of now, the most recently released title in the series was the VR title, Half-Life: Alyx - before that, you have to trek all the way back to 2007 to see anything of the franchise. 

Take a look at some gameplay for Half-Life: Alyx below.

As reported by Kotaku though, earlier this week, Half-Life fans banded together with a mission - to break the concurrent player record for the first game on Steam. It was nothing to do with campaigning for a new game - one of the organisers of the event claimed that it was mainly to prove that the game’s community is still alive and kicking. It also served as a celebration of the iconic FPS, and something to bring players together to share their memories of the game.

The event was dubbed #RememberFreeman (named, of course, after protag Dr. Gordon Freeman), and anyone who wanted to participate simply had to play at least half an hour of the game on Steam. Prior to the event, the concurrent player record for Half-Life was apparently 6,022, but now, that number has more than doubled.

Half-Life community Twitter account @LambdaGen shared that, according to Steam figures, a whopping 12,310 people were playing the game simultaneously on 14 August, which is a massive win, and definitely proves that all these years on, there’s still quite literally thousands of people who love the game. And, let’s face it, there’s good reason as to why.