Half-Life 2 has broken its concurrent Steam players record 20 years after release

The number of people playing Half-Life 2 at the same time reached potentially its highest point ever on Sunday.

SteamDB reports that the game reached a peak of 52,029 players on Saturday, which then rose to 64,085 concurrent players on Sunday.

This is significantly higher than the game has ever reached before, with the highest peak on record being around 16,000 during a community event in August 2021.  Other than that, it has only risen over 5,000 concurrents on a rare handful of occasions.

SteamDB notes that its tracking service started on September 2008, and that it therefore can’t account for any stats accrued by Half-Life 2 in its first four years of release.

It’s certainly a significantly higher count since records began 16 years ago, however.

The huge surge in players comes as the result of a 20th anniversary celebration held by Valve over the weekend, during which time Half-Life 2 was temporarily given away for free (at the time of writing, it remains free to claim for another few hours).

Half-Life 2 reaches 50,000 concurrent players on Steam on its 20th anniversary.

We only have data going back to 2008, so we don’t really know how many played on its original release. pic.twitter.com/r3kkWjd6fG

— SteamDB (@SteamDB) November 16, 2024

The surprise 20th Anniversary Update also added the Episode One and Episode Two expansions to the base game, enabling players to play through the game and both expansions as one playthrough.

A new developer’s commentary was also added to the base Half-Life 2 game, along with integrated Steam Workshop support and numerous bug fixes and new graphical options.

A documentary celebrating the game’s 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 was also released, showing off development footage of the cancelled Half-Life 2: Episode 3.

The documentary follows the development of the 2004 PC game and features interviews with the majority of the game’s most prominent developers, including Valve boss Gabe Newell.