It's been another weekend of records on Valve's Steam. Yesterday at 14:00 UTC, Steam itself broke a new concurrency record of 39.2 million users, over 12 million of whom were playing a game. Valve's platform continues to grow at an astonishing rate. In January, it reached 33.6 million users; the 34 million threshold was broken in early March and quickly surpassed by two new records (35 and 36 million). The 37 million milestone was reached in August, while the following month Steam surpassed 38 million concurrent online users. Of course, these new peaks usually happen whenever big games are released, driving users to engage with the platform. That was the case this past weekend with Grinding Gear's Path of Exile 2 and NetEase's Marvel Rivals.
The action RPG sequel launched into early access this past Friday and it's doing amazing numbers for a premium game (this early access phase is paid, while the full launch will be free to play) with a Steam player peak registered at 578K around fourteen hours ago. So far, user reviews are also quite positive (82%), aligning with Francesco De Meo's early access preview on Wccftech:
The Early Access version made it clear how Grinding Gear Games has a very strong idea of how to evolve the formula of its predecessor to deliver an experience that is, undoubtedly, very fun at all skill levels. Considering how the game manages to be both extremely welcoming and extremely deep at the same time, I have no doubt that Path of Exile 2 will only get better from here on out, having the potential to become one of the best action role-playing games ever released.
The game is performing well on all platforms, surpassing a million users in total. In fact, the developers were forced to enable temporary server queues.
Marvel Rivals also had a strong launch, registering a peak of 444K concurrent users on Steam during the week and then breaking it with 480K users fourteen hours ago. However, the game has even more success on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X - according to NetEase, the team-based PvP superhero shooter has registered over 10 million players in the first three days. Of course, it has the advantage of being already free-to-play.
Are you playing Path of Exile 2 or Marvel Rivals? Let us know in the comments.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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