Half-Life 2 News

Half-Life 2 community rallies to break its peak player count for reasons

The Half-Life 2 community has rallied together to smash the peak concurrent player count record for one of the best FPSs ever made, pushing the total from a dismal 6,882 to over 16K - which is certainly a lot more respectable. Why did the community do this? To see if it could be done, it seems.

The Half-Life 2 'Breaking the Bar' event was organised by fan community Lambda Generation, which wanted to see if the fans could push Half-Life 2's concurrent player count peak up from the low 6,882 it appeared on SteamDB. It seems they succeeded in even beating the all-time peak of 12,953 players from 10 years ago. The new record stands at a much more respectable 16,101.

The problem with Half-Life 2's records is that the game pre-dates most of Steam's tracking features, as it was the title that Steam launched with in the most bare-boned state imaginable. By the time Steam had begun tracking things like concurrent player counts, most people had already finished Half-Life 2.

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Half-Life 2 community gets highest amount of concurrent players since literal records began

In an event called "Breaking the Bar", the Half-Life community decided to rally together and get as many concurrent players together as possible. The rules were simple: starting at 3pm UTC, everyone who wanted to take part simply had to run (and ideally play) Half-Life 2, while prominent streamers would be playing the game to raise attention. The reasoning is maybe a little more ambiguous, but sometimes you simply have to rally behind something—and they did it, hitting a peak of 16,101 concurrent players at exactly 3.30pm, with an additional 8,630 viewers on Twitch...
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Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection is a “Valve sanctioned” tune-up of their classic shooter

A fan-made Half-Life 2 remaster could be heading to Steam. The "Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection" was spotted by data mining site SteamDB last year, but at the time, it was flagged as “not Valve related”. However, according to another, more recent leak from Tyler McVicker, the mod and a half has now been sanctioned by Valve, and will be coming to Steam “soon”. But what is it?

Half-Life 2 is being remastered by the group behind 2015's extensive Half Life 2: Update mod, in a project that will apparently put their previous work "to shame" and appears to have the blessing of Valve itself. A SteamDB listing calls this new project the Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection and includes the staff note that "this is a mod from Filip Victor, not Valve related" just in case we were all getting a bit too excited...
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Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection coming from modders with Valve's consent

Fans of Valve's iconic Half-Life series were excited to spot the sudden appearance of Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection on Steam this week. While sadly not an official Valve product, it is in fact the next version of the excellent Half-Life 2: Update mod from the same team - which will presumably include all the Episode DLC too.

Half-Life 2: Update initially launched in 2015 from community member and modder Filip Victor, and was good enough to get its own Steam page and support from Valve. It featured a complete overhaul of the game's lighting system, new particle and fog effects, many bug fixes, and even a fun Community Commentary Mode - all without sacrificing Half-Life 2's visual look.

Filip Victor's next project is this new Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection, which was spotted on SteamDB and sounds like it was originally meant to just be a major patch for Half-Life 2: Update that incorporated Valve's two episodic expansions. Presumably, the creator has decided the update is big enough to justify its own standalone release, and it'll apparently put the previous Update "to shame".