Half-Life Steam world record smashed in honour of Gordon Freeman

A Half-Life Steam world record has been smashed by fans of Valve’s sci-fi FPS, honouring Gordon Freeman and proving there’s still plenty of buzz for Half-Life 3

Half-Life Steam world record smashed, in honour of Gordon Freeman: a scientist in a powered suit of armour, Gordon Freeman from Half-Life, stands against an orange background

A Half-Life Steam world record has been completely smashed by fans of Valve’s seminal, sci-fi FPS, who are dedicating their efforts to Gordon Freeman, as well as the Half-Life 2 event Raising the Bar, proving that, even after all this time, there are still plenty of people hungry for Half-Life 3.

On August 14, Half-Life players, united under the hashtag #RememberFreeman, signed into Steam to play the 1998 shooter for at least 30 minutes, the minimum amount of time required for their presence to be registered on the Steam player tracker. The objective was to set a new record for concurrent Half-Life users, which had stood at approximately 6,000. A similar effort had been achieved in 2021, when Half-Life 2 players set a new record for concurrent users of the FPS sequel.

Beginning at 3PM GMT, Half-Life players eventually managed to raise the concurrent user number all the way to 12,280, more than doubling the game’s previous record. “The previous record was at 6,022,” writes Radiator Hazard, a Half-Life YouTuber who promoted the #RememberFreeman event on their channel. “We brought it up to 12k! We even brought Steam down to its knees.”

Half-Life Steam world record smashed, in honour of Gordon Freeman: a screen grab from the Twitter of Half-Life player Radiator Hazard

Although we’d like to think of ourselves as optimists, and we’ll never let the dream truly die, when it comes to convicing Valve to finally release details on Half-LIfe 3, even a record-breaking, committed fanbase may not be enough. Nevertheless, there’s still plenty of information out there on the elusive third adventure of Gordon Freeman, all handily summarised in our guide to the complete Half-Life 3 saga so far.

You can also check out our guide to the best FPS games, or perhaps broaden your genre horizons a little with some of the best space games. In terms of Steam player stats, it’s also notable that CS:GO, the top-performing game on Valve’s ubiquitous gaming marketplace, has now officially been played since the Paleaotlithic Era – if that’s not dedication we don’t know what is, apart from maybe playing a game since Jurassic Era.