Steam has been keeping track of Half-Life 2 players since its inception.

SteamDB shows that the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 has brought fans back in droves. With 52,027 concurrent players at the moment of writing this article, there are more people playing Half-Life 2 now than ever before since Steam began keeping track of concurrent users (or at least, the data became accessible) in 2008.

This is a big asterisk. It missed both Half-Life 2’s original release in the year 2005 and the Orange Box launch in 2007. It's still a great showing for a 20 year old singleplayer game. While nostalgia and the hype surrounding Valve’s 2-hour anniversary film are certainly important factors, the main driving force is likely Valve’s new, beefy update to Half-Life 2

The three and a quarter hours of new developer commentary is, in my opinion, the biggest addition to the game. Valve's style of in-game creator comment tracks, accessible at little nodes in the levels, has been a leader in the industry for years. I am eager to see what new development tidbits will be included in this latest batch.

The update also consolidates Episodes One and Two as well as Lost Coast demo into the launcher of the base game. The final big ticket item in the anniversary update is the addition of Steam Workshop modding support. This should be a great boost for the venerable mod scene for HL2.

Half-Life fans have had a good weekend. Along with the documentary and update, we've seen the re-released old Half-Life 2 Development footage that was thought to be lost. We also heard the news that Valve would release an updated and expanded version Half-Life 2 Raising the Bar.