Following its official free-to-play launch on February 11, Lost Ark has already become Steam’s second most-played game of all time by concurrent players with an all-time peak of 1,325,305 people.
As revealed by SteamDB, Lost Ark passed Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s all-time peak of 1,308,963 players to secure the #2 spot. Considering these all-time peaks tend to happen around a game’s release, it may be quite an uphill battle to take down PUBG’s record of 3,257,248 players at one time. That aside, it’s an impressive feat for the MMO that is developed by Smilegate and Tripod Studio and published by Amazon Game Studios.
This accomplishment shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise as Lost Ark had already become one of Steam’s biggest-ever games before it even went free-to-play.
As with many MMOs or online games, there were some server issues as millions of players attempted to play Lost Ark at once. In an effort to help relieve server stress, Smilegate offered players extra Founders Pack items to encourage players to swap to quieter servers.
In our Lost Ark review in progress, we said, “Lost Ark takes a genuinely impressive stab at the isometric action RPG genre, and its integration into a perpetually online world hasn’t seemed too invasive from what I’ve seen so far. It’s expansive and deep, capable of scratching the itch for a new Diablo-like action RPG that is potentially filled with other players to meet and team up with. The excellent and flexible combat system channels the best of its ARPG forebears, but it can start to wear out after you’ve slaughtered your way through enough lower-tier enemies.”
Lost Ark was first released in South Korea in 2019 and later in Japan and Russia, and now North American and European players can jump into Lost Ark’s action, which includes 15 playable characters, a full campaign, and co-op PvE combat.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.