How did HL2 sell?

(I know there are about six of you who clicked on this thread ready to reply with something along the lines of "NOT WELL LOL." Please don't.)

Just as a matter of curiosity, did Valve ever release any information on how many copies HL2 sold? It would surprise me if it didn't do reasonably well, as it can be bought online, and publications have given it great reviews (better than fans).

I never saw any info published by Valve about the sales. All they do is post the review scores on steampowered.com.

I've only heard hearsay about 2+ million copies. But they haven't
released any real figure so far as I know. And with the seperation of
Steam purchases and retail purchases there's another gap there.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Gorbachev</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>I've only heard hearsay about 2+ million copies.
</DIV></DIV>
That seems a bit massive to me. Surely, Valve would have announced something like that; Blizzard just announced recently that they sold 600,000 copies of WoW.

But the thing is that MMORPGs never have huge, huge sales like
standalone or standard multiplayer games do. So I would never expect
WoW to make huge sales on release.

Well Halo 2 sold something like a million copies in a week including
pre-orders. I'm trying real hard to tie that into how many
Half-Life 2 sold but I can't.

If I had to guess I'd say they broke at least a million by now. Two Million+ sounds like a good estimate.

But then again, didn't Doom 3 take a couple of months to break a million?

I think they estimated $250 million profit. There are 2.5 million
unique players on steam every week, but that is cs 1.6 and all other
MODs

250 million profit? That would be great for Valve. I can't
remember what I heard the budget was, but it was HIGH. Anyone
know?

I read that at a point they were spending almost a million a day.

I thought Gabe had said it was roughly 40-45 Million to make.

thus is was made in 40-45 days... so they had it back in 96 those bastards.

Cassius, are you referring to retail sales only? I'm guessing they still sold a fair number, especially here in the UK, but without figures you can only really look at the HL2DM server stats and say "it's at least that number" :razz:

God I just remembered I had an HL2-related dream last night, saw a building in real-life and commented to one of my tutors it had Combine-looking textures on it :argh:

on the other note Cassius mentioned, cause i think it is also important.

i noticed that the boxes of HL2 games disappeared like wildfire around here, but i cannot find anyone whom plays the game. i would like to have some people within driving distance to compare notes with, or even to turn them on to the community here at the pit.

how does one go about locating people whom cannot be found? does anyone have any methods to locate fellow mappers/players from your town's?

i do not go around soliciting people, but i am not introverted either, i do inquire at book stores and what not, but no one seems to have a clue about HL2 :sad:

anywho's, i am curious. if it wasn't for the snarkpit, how many people have you met in the real world whom maps or plays HL?

No figures have been released yet, so anything you've heard is just a
rumour. When I was working in a games shop over Xmas, it was one of the
better-selling PC games, but PC games hardly ever sell over Xmas in the
first place (or, really, ever, excluding The Sims). I think we sold maybe one or two every week. Compared to
the console games, HL2 was left dead in the water. But that's just the
way it is with PC-only games, it's a very small market compared to the
consoles, especially at Xmas.

And who knows? Maybe ten times more people downloaded it over Steam
than people who bought it in a shop. I sincerly doubt it though, since
it's such an new and alien way of acuiring games, and I'm sure not that
many people knew about it outside of gamer circles. So I'm quite
confident in saying, at least compared to console games, it didn't sell
much at all.

anywho's, i am curious. if it wasn't for the snarkpit, how many
people have you met in the real world whom maps or plays HL?

Uhm, I have met a few that used to map for HL or CS, but I can count them on a single hand... 2 or 3 or so, I guess...

As for HL2 sellings, I haven't seen a noticable rush on it nor have I
heard of a lot of schoolmates that they're playing it. Probably a few,
but I had expected a lot more hassle about the game...

how does one go about locating people whom cannot be found?
does anyone have any methods to locate fellow mappers/players from your
town's?

Wear a shirt or hat that shows off the fact that your a HL2 fan.

Or if you really want to find even the most timid of HL2 players (those
who would never go up to a man wearing a hl2 shirt) get a good looking
girl to wear a tight fitting hl2 shirt. That should hook hl2 fans
in close proximity.

40-45 million on a game?! Was that mainly on the dohnut budget for Gabe? lol...

No seriously, for something that cost that much, it really doesn't show...

A lot of my mates play computer games so many of them have played HL2,
and a few have tried their hand at mapping. Nobody I know has really
gotten into it in a big way though.

I think that like HL1, HL2 will make its money over the years, you know as the next "counter strike" comes is realesed.