A massive PlayStation Network outage, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II entered the top 50 most popular games in Steam history, and Manor Lords reached 3 million copies sold—here are the main events in the gaming industry from the past weekend.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
- On Saturday night, users worldwide experienced serious issues accessing the PlayStation Network service. Due to the outage, gamers were unable to, for example, launch games requiring online features, and many also reported difficulties purchasing games on the PlayStation Store and logging into their accounts. Sony managed to restore the PlayStation Network by the evening of the same day. The company did not explain the cause of the outage but offered PlayStation Plus users five additional days of subscription as compensation.
- In its first weekend after release, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II experienced a significant surge of players on Steam: at its peak on February 9th, there were 256,206 users concurrently on the platform. This set a new record for the game. By comparison, its online presence on release day was 96,800 fewer users. As a result, the medieval RPG from Warhorse Studios reached 49th place among games with the highest online presence in Steam history, surpassing titles like Team Fortress 2 (253,997 people), Monster Hunter: Rise (231,360 people), Dragon’s Dogma 2 (228,585 people), and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (225,690 people). Previously, it was reported that the production budget of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was around 1 billion Czech koruna ($41 million)—an amount the game recouped on the first day of sales, selling over a million copies.
- In the Czech city of Kutná Hora, officials decided to capitalize on the popularity of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II by organizing tours of locations from the game. The regional tourist agency has announced two routes: with a guide and self-guided. According to the agency, after the release of the first game, tourists began frequently visiting the landmarks featured in it. For instance, the number of visitors to Rataje Castle doubled, and there was increased interest in Sázava Monastery and the village of Stříbrná Skalice. Now, there is hope in the Czech Republic that thanks to the second game, tourists will also come to Kutná Hora.
- Manor Lords, another successful game set in the medieval era, has reached a sales milestone. Its publisher, Hooded Horse, boasted that the title has sold 3 million copies. It took Manor Lords nine months to reach this mark; the game was released for PC in early access on April 26, 2024.