Half Life: Alyx (2020) was launched on Monday, March 23. It marks Valve Corporation’s first full fledged VR title. Since its release this week, the game has already broken a few records. The game was released on steam and it marks Valve corporation’s return to Half- Life franchise.
According to Steam DB the game saw a high number of concurrent usership. Steam DB, which is an independent agency that keeps track of the the database and tracks user stats on Steam platform recorded a very high number of 42,858 concurrent players. This number was way above than any other VR game available on Steam.
To get a perspective, we’ve brought numbers from another game that was released last year. The second position is of highest number of concurrent users post the release of a game on steam is held by BONEWORKS (2019). This game had a peak number of 8,717 concurrent players a day after it was released. Comparing this to Half Life: Alyx (2020) one gets an idea of the kind of traffic that the new game is receiving. Talking in terms of revenue, Stress Level Zero made more than $3 million right in the first week of its release on Oculus and Steam. It is difficult to predict the exact number but the game is truly set to break many a records in earnings as well.
A number of games get a peak usership during the initial release weeks. However, there are exceptions to this game. Games that are exceptions to this trend are Dota2 and Counter strike: Global Offensive (CSGO). These games saw concurrent peaks even after a couple of years after their first release. Whether or not the concurrent userships will increase in the coming days, the game surely has made a record in VR history by registering 66.6% users on VR playing it.
