Cyberpunk 2077 has hit its highest concurrent player count on Steam since January 2021.
According to the Steam Charts, Cyberpunk 2077 had around 85,555 concurrent players on Steam this past weekend. In comparison, the game had over 1 million concurrent players at launch when it was released in December 2020, before steadily declining. On January 21, 2021, there were around 80,483 concurrent players.
This boost in popularity can be attributed to the high critical reception of the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime series by Studio Trigger and the accompanying 1.6 Patch which includes Edgerunner content.
Thank you so much chooms for this second chance 😭 https://t.co/IONdDq8D9x
— Paweł Sasko (@PaweSasko) September 18, 2022
Cyberpunk 2077 has been on quite the rollercoaster ride. It had a disastrous launch back in December 2020 due to having many bugs and glitches, especially with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One version. Developer CD Projekt Red then offered refunds for any dissatisfied customers and Sony delisted the game from the PlayStation Network Store as the situation was unfolding.
The game was eventually relisted on June 21, 2021, but with the warning that it was best experienced on PlayStation Pro and PlayStation 5. Both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of Cyberpunk 2077 were finally released on February 15, 2022.
Despite this turmoil, CD Projekt Red is not done with the IP, even though Phantom Liberty is the only DLC planned for Cyberpunk 2077, and the development on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions has ended.
In IGN’s Cyberpunk Edgerunners review, we said, “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners delivers a satisfying return to Night City that does a better job exploring why Mike Pondsmith’s famous location became so iconic in the first place.”
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey