The main thing for the weekend (November 18-19)

Online Half-Life on Steam has grown 50 times, Germany has allocated €100 million in subsidies to German game developers, more than 100,000 people have played The Talos Principle 2, — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.

Valve celebrated the 25th anniversary of the first part of Half-Life with a large-scale patch with new content and distribution of the game on Steam. This led to a sharp increase in interest among gamers. According to SteamDB, on the evening of November 19, a record number of people were playing the shooter at the same time — 33,471. For comparison: on the day before the patch was released and the start of the distribution, the maximum online Half-Life on Steam was 677 people.

The German Ministry of Culture has launched a new funding program for German game developers, GamesWirtschaft reported. As part of it, the agency will spend €100 million on studio subsidies over the next three years. Startups and indie teams will be able to claim the money first of all. Recall that Germany already has a similar program, which is overseen by the Federal Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection of Germany, but recently its budget was cut due to problems in the country's economy.

Devolver Digital and Croteam have announced that the circulation of the philosophical puzzle The Talos Principle 2 has exceeded 100,000 copies. To achieve this result, the game took a little more than two weeks. It was released on PC, PlayStation and Xbox on November 2.

The creators of A Little to the Left, a meditative Unpacking game about sorting objects, also shared their successes. According to Max Inferno studio, since the release on November 8, 2022, the title has been bought 999,999 times. A Little to the Left is available on PC and Nintendo Switch.