Counter-Strike. Team Fortress. Dota 2. Left 4 Dead – Valve has a pretty strong pedigree when it comes to multiplayer games. Deadlock will add another page to the House of Gaben’s online catalogue, but one vital chapter in the history of Valve’s experiments has been forgotten. Supposedly released as part of a Half-Life update more than 20 years ago, Ricochet is a competitive FPS seemingly set inside a virtual reality – or maybe outer space. Obscure, mysterious, and often described as the worst game that Valve has ever made, if you’re still eagerly waiting for Half-Life 3, we’ve got some even better news for you: Ricochet just hit a new all-time player count high on Steam.
Even now, in 2025, when the history of Valve has been meticulously researched and shared online, information about Ricochet is scarce. Built using the GoldSrc engine that powers both the original Half-Life and Counter-Strike 1.6, allegedly it was designed to test the viability of more multiplayer FPS games. It was also, supposedly, designed by Robin Walker, who co-created the original Team Fortress mod for Quake and was subsequently hired by Valve to make the competitive shooter in-house. Walker would later work on Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Half-Life 2, and Half-Life Alyx.
So, what do you actually do in Ricochet? Each map consists of several floating platforms which players can move between by stepping on speed-booster tiles, a bit like using the HEV jet pack in Half-Life’s Xen section. You all have a gun that fires these air-hockey-style discs, and the goal is to knock one another off of the platforms. Each kill scores you a point, but if you can bounce your disc off one of the yellow beams surrounding each map, and hit an opponent with a ricochet, you get more points, hence the name.
Initially, Ricochet was a Half-Life mod, supposedly released as part of a free update for the famous shooter back in June 2002. Eventually, however, it was launched as a standalone game and you can still buy it on Steam – adding to the mystery around Ricochet, its release date on the store is listed as November 1, 2000. Until recently, Ricochet’s record concurrent player count was 95 – at its peak, 95 people played the game all at the same time. But thanks to an initiative from the Half-Life and Valve community, that record has been exploded.
Organized via Lambda Generation, the Half-Life community nexus which has also rallied players to break the Steam records for Half-Life 2, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift, the ‘Ricocheting The Bar’ event has been a huge success. After encouraging followers to log on and play Ricochet all together on Tuesday April 1, the forgotten Valve shooter now has a new Steam record of 353 concurrent users.
“Thanks to everyone who took part in Ricocheting The Bar today,” Lambda Generation says. “Rest assured, Ricochet has been given justice, now with a much more deserving three-figure all-time player peak on SteamDB. There is however one last injustice: Gabe, where is Ricochet 2?”
I’d play it.
Check out some of the other best old games, if you long for the erstwhile days of Valve, or maybe the best multiplayer games on PC.
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