Black Mesa
Relive Half-Life.
Your like matters. Every heart nudges this game's GamingPickz Score and where it ranks (a small 5% of the score), so the lists get better for everyone.
- Released
- 2020
- Developer
- Crowbar Collective
- Platforms
- 1 systems
- Critics
- 84
- Steam Deck
- playable
- Download
- 20 GB
What is Black Mesa?
Relive Half-Life.
Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.
The record
| First released | 6 March 2020 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Crowbar Collective |
| Publisher | Crowbar Collective |
| Platforms | PC |
| Genres | First-Person Shooter, Horror |
| Languages | 30 supported |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata Q211229, seeded 30 August 2026. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.
How was Black Mesa received?
Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Metacritic page. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.
Accessibility
Seeing
None declared
Hearing
None declared
Input
- Partial Controller Support
Difficulty
None declared
Method. Features the publisher declared on its own store page. A declaration is a floor, not a review.
What does it support?
| Capability | Support |
|---|---|
| Controller | partial support |
| Cloud saves | Yes |
| Cross-platform play | Yes |
| Mod support | Steam Workshop |
| Online play | Yes |
| In-game purchases | No |
| Steam Deck | playable |
| Download size | 20 GB |
| Add-on content | None listed |
| Age gate | None |
Content descriptors
- Frequent violence or gore
- General mature content
Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.
What does it cost?
Steam price in US dollars, read 30 August 2026. Prices move hourly and vary by region. Check the current price.
Is Black Mesa worth it?
95% of 144,554 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. It costs $19.99 on Steam, and critics score it 84/100.
That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. Players do report problems — see the reported-problems section below before buying. We have not published our own review of this game.
How long is Black Mesa? How long to beat it
Total play time for Black Mesa is about 29 hours to do everything, and around 15.3 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 15.3h | 1,163 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 18.6h | 612 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 29h | 171 |
At its current price of $19.99, beating the main story works out to about $1.31 per hour. That is the price divided by the hours, a value read and not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being the better game.
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
Black Mesa system requirements
The minimum requirements from Black Mesa's Steam page. These are what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings.
| Memory | 6 GB RAM (other games at this level) |
|---|---|
| Processor | 2.6 Dual Core Processor |
| Graphics | 2 GB Dedicated Video Card · runs on a low-end GPU |
| Storage | 20 GB (more games this size) |
Where Black Mesa sits on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueBlack Mesa plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.
1 games have both
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- PC
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
Estimated sales for Black Mesa
These are estimates, not reported figures. Crowbar Collective has not published unit sales for Black Mesa, and nobody outside the company can measure them. What follows is arithmetic on the review count, with the method printed below so you can check it or reject it.
How this was calculated
Steam sales track review counts closely enough that dividing one by the other across games with published figures gives a usable multiplier. This is the standard method for estimating sales from outside a publisher.
| Reviews on Steam | 144,554 |
|---|---|
| Sales per review | 30 to 60 |
| List price | $19.99 |
| Assumed average selling price | 33% to 66% of list |
What this cannot tell you
Steam only. Console, Epic, GOG and retail sales are not in here. For a game that sold heavily on PlayStation this is a fraction of the real number.
The band is wide because the method is imprecise. Review rates vary with price, genre, launch era and how insistently a game asks. Published analyses put the ratio between 30 and 60 for paid games, and we show the whole range rather than picking a point in it.
The owner estimate above measures something else. SteamSpy counts accounts that have the game, which includes free weekends, bundles, giveaways and gifts. It sits higher than a sales figure for that reason, and the two are not alternative answers to the same question.
Revenue is the shakiest line. It assumes an average selling price well below list because most copies move in sales, and it ignores regional pricing, refunds, key resellers and whatever deal the publisher actually has with Valve. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a figure.
If Crowbar Collective publishes a real number we will use that instead and say where it came from. Our editorial policy covers how we handle figures we cannot verify.
Black Mesa price & deals: is it on sale?
We have one reading so far: $19.99 on 30 August 2026. Prices are checked daily from here, and this becomes a chart once there is more than one point to join. A single observation is a price, not a history.
Latest Black Mesa updates & patch notes
Pulled from Black Mesa's own Steam feed on 5 September 2026. Posts marked as from the studio were written by the developer; the rest are articles Steam syndicated from elsewhere. Every one links to its source.
- Summer Sale and Update Peek
- Garry's Mod devs Facepunch will be taking action to "push obviously AI-created slop off" sequel S&box's main page, Garry Newman confirms
- 5 years of Black Mesa: Blue Shift & Upcoming Update!
- Rogue Point is in Early Access
- SAVE BIG: Crowbar Collection Bundle
- The latest Humble Bundle gives you Black Mesa and other FPS games for under $3 each
What readers say about Black Mesa
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
Loading reviews…
Problems players report
We read the 300 most recent negative Steam reviews of Black Mesa on 30 August 2026 and counted what they mention. These are complaints, not confirmed defects: we have not reproduced any of them, and a review describes one person's machine. What the counts tell you is which problems more than one person ran into.
- Crashes and freezes56 of 300 (19%)
This game (again, on steam deck) has one of the worst crashing problems I have ever seen.
Steam review, 13 January 2026 · 18 hours played · 47 readers marked it helpfulAnd just as a final nail to the coffin - on later levels I encountered multiple frame drops and crashes to Windows - problems I have never encountered in both HL and HL2.
Steam review, 5 June 2026 · 15 hours played · 28 readers marked it helpful - Performance and stutter17 of 300 (6%)
Not only that, this section is very unoptimized and is filled with collectible-based achievements, all of which are broken.
Steam review, 3 August 2026 · 71 hours played · 13 readers marked it helpfulI've played plenty of FPS games but the enemy design in this game is a very mixed bag.
Steam review, 6 February 2026 · 32 hours played · 5 readers marked it helpful
A further 13 reviews call the game buggy or broken without saying how, which is why they are counted separately rather than assigned to a theme. Counted by keyword across review text, so a review discussing two problems is counted under both. Read the reviews yourself.
Black Mesa mods
Black Mesa supports Steam Workshop, and the 20 most-installed mods have 1,037,374 subscribers between them. The most installed is Black Mesa: Blue Shift.
Did it run on your PC?
Tell other players how it ran on your machine. One tap, from your saved PC if you have one.
Where Black Mesa appears
The ranked lists and finder pages Black Mesa qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
Get the weekly rundown
One email a week: what moved in the rankings, what launched, and what dropped in price. No more than that, and unsubscribing takes one click.
We send the weekly email and nothing else. Your address is never sold, shared or used to build a profile, and it is not readable by anyone visiting this site. See our privacy policy.
Games like Black Mesa
24 games overlap with Black Mesa on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are Half-Life: Source, Half-Life: Alyx and Half-Life 2.
Black Mesa head to head
See Black Mesa compared side by side, on score, price, specs and more:
More Black Mesa comparisons: vs BioShock Remastered, vs Halo: The Master Chief Collection, vs F.E.A.R. 3, vs Overcast - Walden and the Werewolf, vs Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition
Common questions about Black Mesa
What platforms is Black Mesa on?
Black Mesa is available on PC. It first released in 2020.
How much does Black Mesa cost?
$19.99 on Steam in the United States, read on 30 August 2026. Prices move often and vary by region, so check the store before buying.
Do players recommend Black Mesa?
95% of 144,554 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.
What is the Metacritic score for Black Mesa?
84 out of 100 for the PC version, as published on the game's own Steam store page. Steam can lag Metacritic by a few points.
Does Black Mesa work on Steam Deck?
Valve rates Black Mesa as playable on the Steam Deck, from its own testing.
How big is the Black Mesa download?
20 GB on PC, from the storage requirement on its Steam listing. Console versions differ.
Who made Black Mesa?
Black Mesa was developed by Crowbar Collective and published by Crowbar Collective.
Is Black Mesa worth it in 2026?
95% of 144,554 Steam reviews are positive (Very Positive), and it is $19.99 on steam. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.
Is Black Mesa on sale?
Not at the moment. Black Mesa is at its $19.99 list price on Steam, read on 30 August 2026. It has been cheaper before; the price history above shows when.
What are the system requirements for Black Mesa?
At minimum, Black Mesa needs 6 GB RAM, a 2.6 Dual Core Processor, a 2 GB Dedicated Video Card, 20 GB of storage, from its Steam listing. That is what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings. Check it against your own PC on the can-I-run page.