One-off purchase
Half-Life cost to play
What Half-Life costs in the UK on Steam, its age rating and how many people play it on Steam each month.
Half-Life gameplay, images and trailer
© Valve, Half-Life Steam store page
The short version
- From £8.19: Cheapest standard price: Half-Life (Steam UK, standard price)
- One-off price: Bought once; no store currency or random items on this page
- 12 h to beat: Main story: 12 hours (HowLongToBeat)
- 68p an hour: £8.19 ÷ 12 hours (main story)
- 1,608 Steam peak: Peak concurrent players on Steam, last 30 days (Steam Charts)
- USK 16: Age rating
- Released
- 19 November 1998
- Developer
- Valve
- Platforms
- Linux, PC, Mac
- Age rating
- USK 16
- Genre
- Action, Shooter
- Modes
- Single-player, Multiplayer
On this page
Half-Life player count
Concurrent players on Steam, from Steam Charts, read 28 Oct 2026.
- Peak, last 30 days
- 1,608
- Peak, Sept 2026
- 1,174
- 663 on average
- Change vs Aug 2026
- +3%
- monthly peak
- All-time peak
- 33,467
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page.
Is Half-Life dead?
No. Half-Life peaked at 1,174 players at once on Steam in September 2026, with 663 playing at any moment on average. That is steady with the three months before. These are Steam players only.
| Month | Average | Peak | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 2026 | 663 | 1,174 | +2.5% |
| August 2026 | 695 | 1,145 | −32.2% |
| July 2026 | 893 | 1,690 | +5.4% |
| June 2026 | 758 | 1,603 | +31.2% |
| May 2026 | 703 | 1,222 | −3.5% |
| April 2026 | 698 | 1,266 | −13.2% |
| March 2026 | 746 | 1,459 | +7.4% |
| February 2026 | 758 | 1,359 | −38.8% |
| January 2026 | 1,023 | 2,222 | +1.4% |
| December 2025 | 1,103 | 2,191 | +14.7% |
| November 2025 | 902 | 1,911 | +54.0% |
| October 2025 | 640 | 1,241 | – |
What Half-Life costs to play
| Item | Price | Per | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Half-Life (Steam UK, standard price) | £8.19 | game | store.steampowered.com Checked 21 Oct 2026 |
How long is Half-Life?
Half-Life takes about 12 hours to finish the main story, and about 15.5 hours to complete everything.
- Main story12 h
- Main + extras14 h
- Completionist15.5 h
Cost per hour (main story)
68p
£8.19 on Steam UK ÷ 12 h
Source: HowLongToBeat, read 28 Oct 2026. Your time will vary with difficulty and play style.
How Half-Life is rated
GamesChart Score
87.3, #46 of 3,236 rated games
#3 of 1998 · #5 of the 1990s · #11 in Puzzle · #36 on PC
Critics
Players
Built from 302,478 ratings across 5 of 5 sources. Critics and players count 50/50. Includes Half-Life: Source (2004), Black Mesa (2020). Ratings pulled 5 November 2026.
Where it sits in the ranking
- #45
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask2000 · Nintendo EAD Software Development Group No.387.4 - #46
Half-Life1998 · Valve87.3 - #47
Deus Ex: Human Revolution2011 · Eidos Montréal87.2
Half-Life questions
How much does Half-Life cost in the UK?
Half-Life (Steam UK, standard price): £8.19. Prices checked 21 October 2026.
Is Half-Life free to play?
No. Half-Life is not free to play: you buy the game to play it.
How long is Half-Life?
Main story: about 12 hours. Main + extras: about 14 hours. Completionist: about 15.5 hours (HowLongToBeat). At £8.19, that's 68p per hour (main story).
What age rating is Half-Life?
Half-Life is rated USK 16.
How many people play Half-Life?
Peak concurrent players on Steam, last 30 days (Steam Charts): 1,608, checked 21 October 2026. Its all-time Steam peak is 33,467.
What is Half-Life's all-time Steam peak?
33,467 concurrent players on Steam, the highest Steam Charts has recorded for Half-Life (read 28 October 2026). The peak in the last 30 days was 1,608. Players on other stores and consoles aren't counted.
Is Half-Life dead?
No. Half-Life peaked at 1,174 players at once on Steam in September 2026, with 663 playing at any moment on average. That is steady with the three months before. These are Steam players only.
Do these Half-Life player numbers include consoles?
No. The player counts on this page are Steam only (Steam Charts, read 28 October 2026). People playing on Linux, Mac, through Game Pass or on other PC stores aren't counted, and publishers rarely publish those figures.
Who makes Half-Life?
Half-Life is developed by Valve.
Half-Life is a single-player first-person shooter that also has a multiplayer mode. It was developed and published by Valve and first released in 1998 on PC; Steam gives its release date as 19 November 1998. It is sold on Steam for a one-off price.
How it plays
Half-Life begins with an explosion during a failed experiment at the Black Mesa Research Facility, which rips open a portal to an alien world. You play physicist Gordon Freeman, who survives and must fight both aliens and government forces to save humankind before Earth is overrun.
Half-Life was Valve's first game, and Valve describes it as a blend of action and adventure in which players must think to survive, combining combat, puzzle-solving and storytelling.
Alongside the single-player game there is a multiplayer mode for playing against others online. Valve's current version adds the Uplink mini-campaign, Steam Deck support, updated graphics settings, new multiplayer maps and some restored content, along with interviews with the original developers. Steam lists online player-versus-player play and full controller support.
What it costs
Half-Life costs £8.19 on Steam UK at standard price. Steam lists 1 add-on item for the game.
Players
The 30-day peak on Steam Charts was 1,608 concurrent players on 21 October 2026. Its all-time peak on Steam Charts is 33,467.
Age rating
We could not find the original Half-Life in the pegi.info database under its own name; pegi.info lists PEGI 16 for Half-Life 2 and for the Half-Life: Blue Shift expansion, not for this game. Steam's store data gives it USK 16, so that is the rating shown on this page.
It ranks #46 in our best games of all time ranking.
How we checked
We read the Steam UK store data on 21 October 2026, at standard price, and took the USK rating from the same listing. Player figures are from Steam Charts on the same day. The gameplay description is based on the publisher's Steam store page and Valve's official Half-Life site.
Card art and page images: screenshots from Valve's Half-Life Steam store page. © Valve. All trademarks belong to their owners. GamesChart is not endorsed by or affiliated with Valve.
Official links: Steam
Games like Half-Life
Sources
- Card art and page images – Half-Life Steam store screenshots (Valve), published by store.steampowered.com
- Steam UK – Half-Life, published by store.steampowered.com
- PEGI rating – Half-Life, published by pegi.info
- Age ratings – Half-Life (Steam store data), published by store.steampowered.com
- Steam Charts – Half-Life, published by steamcharts.com
- Valve – Half-Life official site, published by half-life.com
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