Half-Life reaches its highest ever player peak on its 25th birthday

November 19 was officially the 25th anniversary of Half-Life, one of the most influential FPS games ever made. Two and a half decades! It’s hard to imagine, and it’s even harder to imagine it’s still going strong, as evidenced by recent statistics.

Spurred by this milestone birthday, Half-Life has received an influx of players, with SteamDB reporting the game’s highest player count on record. Over the last 24 hours, 33,471 players have jumped back into the world of Black Mesa, the most it’s ever achieved, according to the history.

Going back as far as possible, the graph shows that, aside from a few spikes here and there, the game has retained a fairly steady flow of players. Until recently, of course. At the time of writing, nearly 19,000 people are playing right now. That’s more than Starfield.

That’s a lot of resonance cascades

It’s no secret why Half-Life is experiencing a boon right now. To go with the 25th anniversary, Valve released a new update for the game, as well as a special documentary about the development of this absolute classic.

As such, it’s on a lot of people’s minds right now, and understandably so. Featuring one of the most iconic openings in an FPS, Half-Life raised the bar for what was possible in video game technology and storytelling.

If you’ve never played it before, now’s your chance, as it’s currently free on Steam. We might take a lot of its elements for granted these days but, take it from an aging gamer, this stuff was revolutionary at the time.