Yesterday, the release of the cooperative action Outriders from the studio People Can Fly took place. The online project instantly exceeded 100 thousand people. This is the best start among all Square Enix games released on Steam.Already three hours after the release, 111,953 people were playing Outriders at the same time, according to SteamDB.
According to the peak online for April 1, the action hit the top ten most popular Steam games.
Before that, the most successful launch among all Square Enix games was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, which attracted 52 thousand simultaneous players at the start.
For comparison, in Marvel’s Avengers, which Square Enix had high hopes for, only 29 thousand people played at the start at the same time. Shortly after the release, online dropped by 96% and could not rise significantly even after the release of updates. However, in the case of Outriders, the publisher seems to have managed to avoid the previous mistakes.
The success of the game People Can Fly is explained not only by the lack of other major releases on the market. This time Square Enix went to meet the players, making several important marketing decisions like supporting cross-play and positioning Outriders as a title with a full-fledged story campaign (albeit with a cooperative), and not as a service game.
Despite a number of technical problems and mixed user reviews at the start, Outriders managed to interest a lot of players. The game is also available on consoles, and on Xbox it is included in the Game Pass subscription from the start.