Sun, Feb 05, 2012 | 23:45 GMT

Three quarters of Half-life protesters failed to turn up

This weekend’s action to protest Valve’s lack of communication over Half-life 3 was something of a blow out.

While over 13,000 players dutifully logged into Half-Life 2 as planned, that number falls disappointingly short for the 50,000 who signed up to take part.

That said, organisers report Half-Life 2 peaked at 11th on Steam’s charts, and the player count was a good 10,000 over usual levels.

The original Half-life and its sequel are considered revolutionary and highly-influential narrative-driven shooters, but the series has been dormant since the 2007 release of Half-life 2: Episode 2, with Valve refusing even to confirm development of a third episode or additional full sequel.

Thanks, Kotaku.

12 comments

Fin
06/02/12, 12:18 am

…

Slacktivism at its best!

LOLshock94
06/02/12, 12:29 am

hahaha nerds fail

DSB
06/02/12, 12:42 am

I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.

How many copies did Half-Life 2 and the episodes sell?

deadstoned
06/02/12, 1:18 am

Well I turned up and had a good time escaping City 17 and then the end citadel bit, I blame the hipsters joining the group and then not playing . Got to 12,000+ though I think, but still not that impressive for a 50,000+ group.

Still quite a nice spike though: http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&appid=220

_LarZen_
06/02/12, 1:52 am

Half Life 2 is probably one of the most over rated games of all time…

Yoshi
06/02/12, 1:54 am

Extremely slow news day much?

Phoenixblight
06/02/12, 2:11 am

Yes its called Sunday.

G1GAHURTZ
06/02/12, 6:08 am

I’ve been meaning to finish Episode 1 from The Orange Box for years now…

Way too busy.

GwynbleiddiuM
06/02/12, 7:26 am

I turned up and had a massive fun, and my twitter account is there to prove it: “I unlocked the Heavy Weapons achievement on Half-Life 2! http://raptr.com/GwynbleiddiuM”

PS: I didn’t know that I have a raptr ID.
PS: Last time I played was back in 2010, where we didn’t have achievements yet, I should run anew for that sake.

#10

Maximum Payne
06/02/12, 8:14 am

@3 Half Life 2 sold around 12 mill.

#11

schnide
06/02/12, 12:04 pm

As Kotaku themselves reported, those kind of attendance levels are actually pretty good.

Additionally, you still reported on the story, making the campaign for attention a success.

#12

Joe Musashi
06/02/12, 12:23 pm

Amazing. You’d think that gamers would be able to, y’know, turn up and play a game. It’s not like it’s a bad game either. Or an unpopular genre.

Another own-goal for the vocal gamer that makes a lot of noise but doesn’t back it up with even the simplest action.

I guess what this shows is that for every 100 or so gamers that complain about something, only 25 actually give enough of a damn to lift a finger about it. Seems like we’ve been here before.