Valve celebrated the 25th birthday of Half-Life 1 in style, causing the game’s peak player count to skyrocket.
Half-Life 1 (HL1) came out on November 19, 1998, so one of the most revolutionary games of all time is now 25 years old. Valve celebrated this birthday all weekend by releasing an amazing documentary, making the game free and even adding some updates and new content to it.
This celebration went down very well and caused a lot of excitement. Tons of players came back to the classic to check it out again, resulting in HL1 completely destroying its previous peak player count on Steam.
Half-Life 1 Celebrates 25th Birthday In Style, Overtakes Games Like Starfield On Steam
During its birthday weekend, HL1 reached a peak of 33,467 concurrent players, completely blowing the previous record of 10,480 players out of the water. And not just that, it even managed to overtake games like Starfield (30,968), Remnant 2 (21,200) or Street Fighter 6 (21,102).
That didn’t just happen because the game was offered for free, Valve also decided to add a bunch of new stuff to the classic shooter with the 25th anniversary update.
This includes old content that never made it into the full game and was now restored, like multiplayer skins for Ivan the Space Biker, Proto-Barney, The Skeleton and Too Much Coffee Man. Players can also check out Half-Life Uplink, which was originally a limited demo for the game that is now publicly (and officially) available for the first time.
But that’s not all! Half-Life Deathmatch also has four brand-new maps now: Contamination, Pool Party, Disposal, and Rocket Frenzy. And there are some bug fixes, Widescreen support and the game is verified on Steam Deck now. Damn, they really put some work into this!
Half-Life is still really fun, and now it’s better than ever. You can claim the game for free until November 20, so do that if you don’t already have it in your library. See you on the Deathmatch servers!