Slay the Spire 2 released into Steam Early Access today, and the indie roguelike deckbuilder has already attracted a huge number of players on its first day. Slay the Spire 2 hit a peak of 282,314 concurrent players, seeing continued player growth in the 12 hours following its release.
Mega Crit’s Slay the Spire sequel launched against some stiff competition–Bungie’s Marathon, Pokemon Pokopia, and a handful of other titles also released on the same day, while it also had to contend with the ongoing popularity of games like Resident Evil Requiem and Arc Raiders.
When it comes to PC, Slay The Spire 2 seems to be the clear winner, attracting higher Steam numbers than any of the other March 5 releases. Along with hitting number one on Steam’s top sellers chart, the game has also beat the likes of Arc Raiders and PUBG to claim the third spot on the Steam concurrents chart. While Marathon’s numbers are looking solid enough for day one, Slay the Spire 2 has attracted four times as many concurrent players as the Bungie extraction shooter.
The massive launch day has swiftly broken records set by other popular games in the same genre, beating the all-time peaks of games like Hades 2, Balatro, Vampire Survivors, and Mewgenics. Slay The Spire 2 now claims the record for the highest peak concurrents of any deckbuilder on Steam, and is a close second to Elden Ring Nightreign in the roguelike category.
Slay the Spire 2’s early success just goes to show that roguelikes are more popular than ever, with even games from small studios putting up bigger numbers than ambitious AAA projects. Slay the Spire 2 launched into early access with a new four-player co-op mode, which no doubt is helping to attract more players to the game. Mega Crit has said that Slay the Spire 2 will stay in early access for one to two years before seeing a full launch.