Update - 11:30 AM August 14th,
It's official, Lambda Generation's Half-Life 2 Breaking the Bar event has officially led to the community shattering the Half-Life 2 peak player count record. At the time of this update, the new record was set over 16k, almost triple the previous recorded high, showing that in 2021 Valve's seminal shooter is still popular among players.
Original story below
Lambda Generation is a Half-Life fansite that has an intriguing event going on this weekend: the fine folks of this community want everyone's help to smash the Half-Life 2 peak player count.
Half-Life 2 is an iconic first-person shooter created by Valve, the same company that created the Steam digital distribution service (and a couple other games you may have heard of, too). It arguably was a driving force for popularizing the use of physics engines in games and spawned several episodic sequels and a VR prequel called Half-Life: Alyx.
The game (and the franchise) is beloved by many, and Half-Life fansite Lambda Generation has a pretty cool project that kicks off this weekend: they're going to try to smash the game's all-time peak player count on Steam Charts.
How the Half-Life 2 Breaking The Bar Event Works
The Half-Life 2 Breaking The Bar event is pretty straightforward — all you have to do is log onto the game at a specific and start playing the game as detailed in a tweet on the group's official account.
This event ultimately seeks to raise the peak player count of Half-Life 2 on Steam Charts. Quite a few games have racked up player counts numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands, but Half-Life 2 has never had more than 6,882 people playing at the same time. That's pretty low for such an iconic game, and that's exactly what this campaign wants to change.
When is the Half-Life 2 Breaking The Bar Event?
The Half-Life 2 Breaking The Bar event starts August 14, 2021, at the following times:
- 8:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time
- 11:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
- 4:00 PM British Summer Time
- 5:00 PM Central European Summer Time
There's no specified duration outlined for playing the game, but it'd probably be a good idea to play for a few hours if you wish to truly participate in this event. And hey — when's the last time you have a good playthrough of Half-Life 2 anyway?
If you somehow don't already own this iconic first-person shooter, you can buy Half-Life 2 on Steam for $9.99 or your regional equivalent. You can also swing by Lambda Generation's website and check out a pretty cool Half-Life community.
What do you think of the Half-Life 2 Breaking The Bar event? What's your favorite Half-Life game? Let us know in the comments below!