Player Count for 11-Year-Old Steam Game is Suddenly Blowing Up

The popular space program simulator on Steam, Kerbal Space Program, has hit a new all-time peak player count 11 years after it originally launched. Kerbal Space Program left early access with its 1.0 release in 2015, when the game reached a peak player count of just over 19,000. Now, the hit simulation game has exceeded this player count in a massive user spike over a decade later.

Kerbal Space Program sees players attempt to send an alien race, called Kerbals, into space and complete a series of missions to explore the far reaches of the solar system. Players can use the realistic aerodynamics and orbital physics of Kerbal Space Program to experiment with building spacecraft to send their Kerbals into space. Aside from the Career and Science Modes, Kerbal Space Program‘s Sandbox Mode helped popularize the game through the wacky inventions players could create.

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Kerbal Space Program Player Count Peaks at Over 20,000 Players Following the Artemis 2 Spaceflight

Kerbal Space Program‘s player count is sitting at just over 20,000 players for the month of April 2026, according to SteamDB. This new peak beats the game’s 2015 1.0 launch player peak by nearly 1,000 and comes a surprising 11 years after launch. While Kerbal Space Program is a timeless entry in the physics simulator genre, there’s a clear culprit behind this impressive player spike.

NASA’s recent space Artemis 2 mission likely inspired many Kerbal Space Program fans to jump back into the game in April 2026. Launching on April 1, Artemis 2 was a nine-day lunar flyby mission that saw astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, and Reid Wiseman complete the first low Earth orbit flight since the Apollo 17 mission of 1972. The crew completed their mission and returned to Earth on April 10, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California.

After witnessing the real-life spaceflight of Artemis 2 and its crew, Kerbal Space Program became the ideal testing grounds for fans wanting to recreate the mission in the game’s orbital simulation engine. For fans really wanting to roleplay as NASA, the game allows players to control every aspect of the mission, from constructing a rocket in Kerbal Space Program to launch and eventually performing complex spaceflight maneuvers. Kerbal Space Program even has the means to go above and beyond the Artemis 2 mission objectives, allowing players to create space stations and attempt landings on unknown planets.

While Kerbal Space Program does have a sequel, Kerbal Space Program 2 is currently sitting at an “Overwhelming Negative” Steam user rating. Originally released in early access in 2023, Kerbal Space Program 2 was already a controversial sequel due to it being developed by Intercept Games, an entirely different studio from the developer of the original Kerbal Space Program, Squad. In 2024, Intercept Games was closed down by Take-Two Interactive, and the majority of the developers of Kerbal Space Program 2 were laid off, leading the game to be review bombed on Steam and leaving the future of the game up in the air. In the meantime, the original Kerbal Space Program has flourished thanks to mod support and renewed interest in spaceflight simulation following the Artemis 2 mission.