The site organizing the event has previously broken concurrent records for Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and others.
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 from the distant year 2000 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 across these two-and-a-half decades. So there may be some real affection in Half-Life fansite LambdaGeneration‘s call for all of us to give Ricochet some love this April Fool’s Day.
The site wants to beat Ricochet’s all-time Steam concurrents record as set down by SteamDB: Just 95 simultaneous players, logged six years ago.
“The Ricochet SteamDB all-time peak player count stands at a measly 95 players,” says the LambdaGeneration Team. “This is a travesty. We all know Ricochet is the best Valve game ever made. Justice must be done.”
The website has managed to boost Ricochet’s player count, hitting a 28 player peak at last check, a hearty improvement over the five or so players the game usually hosts, but still a long way off from 95.
LambdaGeneration says it has successfully performed similar stunts for other Valve games in the past, organizing “an online mass-playthrough of Half-Life 2” in 2021 which broke its peak player count at the time (it was later broken when Valve briefly made Half-Life 2 free-to-keep last year and updated it for the 20th anniversary). The Half-Life 2 event was followed by similar events for Half-Life, Half-Life: Opposing Force and Half-Life: Blue Shift.
The Ricochet record attempt has been dubbed #RicochetingTheBar, and is scheduled for right about as I publish this: 7 pm GMT (8 pm BST, 3 pm EDT, 12 pm PDT).
“Team Fortress 2: Classic server host VaultF4 will be providing 200+ slots on Ricochet servers for the event,” says the site. There’s more about the event on LambdaGeneration.
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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