Half Life 2 is a great game and Valve’s celebration this weekend has cemented the game as a classic. This weekend marked the 20th Anniversary of Half Life 2 to celebrate Steam had a sale as well as a free giveaway. The game also received a surprise update!
Half Life 2 came out in 2004, however the tracking statistics only go as far back as 2008. As reported by VGC, SteamDB shared the results of this past weekend’s activities on Twitter. It reached 50,000 concurrent users on Saturday. While this number would balloon to hit 64,085 concurrent users by Sunday.
Making the game free to download for a weekend is an awesome move by a developer and gaming marketplace. Instead of adding an update and making users pay for it as a DLC, Valve went ahead and gifted that update to all owners and allowed anyone that wanted to, to download the game too. By contrast the abysmal 35th Legend of Zelda Anniversary celebration by Nintendo was… Nothing. The Game&Watch was announced at E3 in 2021 and didn’t even come close to scratching the itch that fans had. Well Nintendo, take notes. This is how it’s done.
It’s amazing that a game’s concurrent players could peak 20 years after its release. It’s even more impressive that after 20 years Half Life 2 received updated graphics options and bug fixes. Not something to be taken lightly in this day and age. Thank you Valve and all those involved. If you’d like to read more about the new Half Life game that are in the works , click here.
