Forgotten Half-Life game reaches new player peak thanks to fan event

Half-Life: Blue Shift is a game mostly forgotten, with only a few dozen players logging in each day to re-live the adventures of Barney Calhoun. But recently, the game recorded a new peak thanks to a fan event.

On Aug. 14, 3,070 fans gathered to play the expansion to the original Half-Life game, setting a new all-time peak for the title, according to Steam Charts. This was sparked by the series’ community, who organized an event called “Shifting the Bar” which attempted (and succeeded) to break the all-time concurrent player peak Blue Shift.

Blue Shift is an expansion to the original Half-Life. It depicts the same events as the original title, but from the perspective of another key character in the series, Barney Calhoun, who’s a security guard at the Black Mesa Research Facility. Instead of trying to save the world like Gordon Freeman, this time around, players’ task is to evacuate the personnel after the facility turns into a war zone.

When Half-Life fans decide to “Shift the Bar,” they spread messages across social media sites like Reddit and X, using a hashtag on the latter. The players then decide on which day the event willtake place, with the last one happening on Saturday, Aug. 24.

In the days prior to the events, players created posters inviting others to take part in Shifting the Bar. These often riffed on propaganda posters, with one displaying a Black Mesa security officer, and a hashtag showcasing the name of the event—not dissimilar to the old Uncle Sam posters advocating U.S. citizens to join the military.

Naturally, a few content creators also participated in Shifting the Bar. A YouTube channel “noclick” livestreamed the entire campaign of the game, which took them barely over two and half hours. The broadcast itself recorded over 2,900 views at the time of writing, with many other creators also live-streaming the event to add to that view count.

Ever since Steam Charts went live in July 2012, Half-Life: Blue Shift has crossed the threshhold of 300 peak players only twice: once in November 2023, and another in January 2020. With the most recent shifting of the bar, it’s safe to say breaking that concurrent player number will be a bit more difficult next time.