Valve’s flagship VR game Half-Life: Alyx has surpassed 2 million owners on Steam, according to SteamSpy.
Previously, the game was marked in the 1 million – 2 million owners bracket on the platform, but recently changed over to the 2 million – 5 million bracket. These aren’t official numbers from Valve itself, so can’t be taken as definitive, but Steam Spy has long served as one of the few means of estimating game sales on Steam.
While this means that at least 2 million people own the game in their Steam library, it does not represent sales figures. Owners of the game also include those who received the game for free as part of a promotion, of which there were many for Half-Life: Alyx.
The most notable promotion, which is ongoing, is that all owners of Valve Index hardware receive a copy of Half-Life: Alyx for free. This applied not just to the full Valve Index kit, but even just to people who solely bought the Valve Index controllers to use with a different headset.
Likewise, HTC partnered with Valve multiple times for various promotional bundles that offered Alyx for free with the purchase of a HTC Vive headset – the most recent of which only just ended.
Taking these promotions into account, a decent chunk of those 2 million Half-Life: Alyx owners could be from these offers, but it’s impossible to determine the breakdown of sales to promotional copies. Nonetheless, surpassing 2 million copies, regardless of method, is an impressive feat for Valve’s first fully-fledged VR game.
Half-Life: Alyx released in March, and remains one of the best releases of the year. If you’re one of the few people who hasn’t played the game and is still on the fence, be sure to check out our review.
