Lost Ark, the latest title published by Amazon Game Studios, has become the second most-played game of all time in terms of concurrent players.
Following its free-to-play launch on February 11, the MMO/ARPG title hit an all-time peak of 1,325,305 players on Steam. According to SteamDB, this means the game is now in second place, overtaking Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO). At its peak, CS: GO had 1,308,963 concurrent players. The current record is still held by Player Unknown’s BattleGrounds (PUBG) and stands at 3,257,248 concurrent players.
Prior to going free-to-play, Lost Ark was already one of the biggest games on Steam, surpassing the likes of Among Us and Grand Theft Auto Online. These numbers were possibly also bolstered by the incentives offered to those watching the game on Twitch, with items available to all players via Twitch Drops provided they watch specific amounts of gameplay.
The demand was so high for people trying to play that Lost Ark developer Smilegate were offering players additional Founder’s Pack items as an incentive to switch to a quieter server to play their game. However, there were still some initial delays due to server congestion that included some features being disabled in certain regions, some classes being gender-locked and new players being unable to create characters on some servers.
Lost Ark was first released in South Korea in 2019, followed by a release in Japan and Russia prior to the North American and European launch earlier this month.
Lost Ark is available on PC now.
Words by Megan Roxburgh
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