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The Steam concurrents record for 25-year-old Valve game Ricochet has been blown out of the water by a group of players brought together by Half-Life fansite LambdaGeneration.
Valve has made some of the most influential games of all time, but Ricochet probably can’t be put in that category. The arena combat game is best known today as the subject of a running joke where, instead of crying out for Half-Life 3, Valve fans demand that the company drop everything to produce Ricochet 2.
It’s one of those jokes that has gone on for so long, it’s hard to tell how ironic it still is—I think a genuine respect for Ricochet has grown over these two-and-a-half decades. So there may have been some real affection in LambdaGeneration’s call for all of us to give Ricochet some love this April Fool’s Day.
“The Ricochet SteamDB all-time peak player count stands at a measly 95 players,” said the LambdaGeneration team. “This is a travesty. We all know Ricochet is the best Valve game ever made. Justice must be done.”
And justice has been done. As I write, over 300 people are playing Ricochet on Steam with the help of Team Fortress 2: Classic server host VaultF4. If you want to join in, you can find more about the event on LambdaGeneration.
Our own Andy Chalk jumped in, and reported back that he found himself crammed into a map with dozens of players. He sent back the chaotic video below. It’s unclear if we’ll ever hear from Andy again, or if he’s been swallowed by Ricochet fever, never to return to reality.
LambdaGeneration has successfully performed similar stunts in the past, organizing “an online mass-playthrough of Half-Life 2” in 2021 which broke its peak player count at the time (which was broken again when Valve briefly made Half-Life 2 free-to-keep and updated it for the 20th anniversary last year). The Half-Life 2 event was followed by similar events for Half-Life, Half-Life: Opposing Force, and Half-Life: Blue Shift.
Ricochet was originally a Half-Life mod which was later released standalone on Steam. Obviously it didn’t go on to have the success of Team Fortress or Counter-Strike, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. Valve describes Ricochet as “a futuristic action game that challenges your agility as well as your aim,” and it’s $5 on Steam.
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Kurt Indovina
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