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.