Half-Life 2 Soars To All-Time Peak on Steam Following Huge Update

In case you've been transported to Xen and missed it, Valve unleashed the Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary Update on 16 November 2024 with brand-new features and changes. For a short period of time, Half-Life 2 was also free on Steam to celebrate this momentous occasion.

But how many players can a game that is now over 20 years old really bring in? After all, it's not the Half-Life 2 RTX version that takes the graphical prowess to the next level with Ray Tracing and much more. 

Read More: Half-Life 2 RTX Video Celebrating 20th Anniversary Hits The Spot

The answer is: Quite a lot, actually! In fact, Half-Life 2 hit its all-time concurrent player peak on Sunday, 17 November 2024, at roughly 17:00 UTC. Just over 64,000 gamers were playing Half-Life 2 via Steam at this time. To be precise, the new all-time concurrent player peak for Half-Life 2 is 64,085. That's according to the latest information from SteamDB, a trusted source of all things Steam and Valve.

Players are sticking around, as on 19 November 2024, the peak for the day was still roughly 44,000. Considering Half-Life 2 is two decades old, that's a huge feat and showcases that Valve's iconic franchise is still in the minds of gamers across the globe. 

Well done, Valve, well done. The massive update and bringing all the Half-Life 2 episodes together, adding new features and a tonne of fixes/changes did pull back quite a lot of players. 

Read More: Latest Half-Life 2 Patch Notes: Changes, Content & Fixes

The newfound popularity also comes with renewed speculation and hopes for Half-Life 3. After all, Valve's developers, as well as Gabe Newell himself, did speak about Half-Life 2: Episode 3 during the recently released documentary, which you can watch below. It's over two hours long, so grab a snack and enjoy!