Half-Life: Alyx released this past Monday and brought in 43,000 concurrent players on Steam. The latest Half-Life game is exclusive to virtual reality players, though Valve predicts it may be modded to be playable without a VR headset at some point in the future.
A Steam data tracking website, SteamDB, shows the Half-Life: Alyx user peak on Monday evening at 42,858 concurrent players.
The numbers are constrained by the fact that a virtual reality headset, like the Valve Index, is required to play the game. For many people, this is a large barrier to entry. It’s also a potential missed sales opportunity for Valve, but the game still gained a lot of popularity due to the hardcore Half-Life fanbase.
On Monday evening there were more than 300,000 Twitch viewers watching various streamers play through the story. Normally, we see player numbers far exceed viewer counts, but in this case, viewers outweighed players sevenfold.
It’s far too early to judge the future of the game after just one day on the market. After waiting 13 years since Half-Life Episode Two, many critics are happy with what Valve managed to do with Half-Life: Alyx.
