The long-awaited and anxiously-anticipated release of Lost Ark to the western markets seems to have been well worth it. Lost Ark is, at present, the most popular game on Steam. As of the time of writing, Lost Ark has a total of 508,560 current players and records a peak player count on Steam charts of 1.3 million players so far. This figure also makes it the second most popular game of all time behind PUBG, which hit 3.2 million peak players in 2018.
This roaring success is partly due to the sheer number of players pre-loading the game. Lost Ark racked up 984,111 concurrent players almost instantaneously on its launch day. While this was an impressive feat by anyone’s standards, Lost Ark shattered its own record the following day when it reported 1.325,305 players active simultaneously. This means that on its second day, Lost Ark not only beat Dota 2 and Counter-Strike Global Offensive with concurrent players for the day, but it also beat both games’ all-time records for concurrent players and became the most played game on Steam.
While it seems to be quite a distance from shattering PUBG’s peak player stats, Lost Ark is only on its third day, and it’s, therefore, way too early to tell how popular this game could get. Reporting metrics as it has so early into its career definitely bodes well for the free-to-play MMORPG. The thing that seems to be driving Lost Ark’s popularity, and will hopefully continue to do so, is the World of Warcraft-shaped hole left in gamers’ lives since many feel the aging MMO is close to the end of its existence.
Time alone will tell how widely Lost Ark is adopted and how many WoW players will find solace in Arkesia and the battle against Kazeros. But, if its current stats are anything to go by, Lost Ark is poised to make massive waves in the gaming community. Check out Lost Ark’s Twitch drops.
