Half-Life 2 player count soars after massive 20th anniversary update: ‘The GOAT FPS is still relevant’

It’s not often that 20-year-old titles see massive player counts no matter what sort of event is attached to them. But Half-Life 2 is no ordinary title. It’s arguably the best PC game of all time. And, having just recently celebrated its 20th birthday, it now has over 50,000 concurrent players.

Valve surprise-dropped a huge two-hour-long documentary on the creation of Half-Life 2, the studio’s biggest and best game, on Nov. 15. In true Valve fashion the release of said documentary and the massive Half-Life 2 20th anniversary update had no promotion or mention whatsoever. It just sort of happened, and it’s downright glorious.

The documentary summarizes as well as it can the entire, genuinely chaotic—and almost failed—production of the historical title. The update, on the other hand, made the game free-to-keep, introduced hundreds of bugfixes and quality-of-life improvements akin to the Half-Life 1 25th anniversary event, and combined all the Episodes with the base game, allowing for a seamless and unobstructed cruise through Gordon Freeman’s fantastic story.

Suffice it to say this attracted a lot of players to the game. According to SteamDB, over 50,000 fans clocked in during peak hours on Nov. 16, compared to the game’s average of just over 800 players on a good day. This makes Half-Life 2 more popular than the likes of Enshrouded, Overwatch 2, Destiny 2, and many, many other modern live-service titles, which is a hell of an achievement for a game almost old enough to drink.

The Steam reviews are also overwhelmingly positive (as they have always been) with players absolutely ecstatic to return to City 17 and combat the Combine once more. “Yet 20 years later, the GOAT fps is still relevant and receiving quality updates from the developers,” reads one review on Steam (on whose development Valve also commented in the documentary.

Hopefully Valve is well aware the Half-Life IP and fandom are alive and well and are convinced that now is the time to return to the mid-2000s and revive all those Half-Life 3 ideas they had at the time and grant us the innovative and cathartic closure to one of the greatest series in video game history.