UPDATE, Sept. 26, 12:00 p.m. PT: After our initial report of Cyberpunk 2077’s surge of popularity after the release of Update 2.0, it’s continued to spike following the launch of the Phantom Liberty expansion. As spotted by Benji-Sales on X/Twitter, it notched nearly 250k concurrent players on Steam today, the highest player count since Cyberpunk 2077’s initial launch in December 2020.
PREVIOUS STORY: Cyberpunk 2077’s popularity has spiked following the release of Update 2.0, with the game rocketing to eighth place on Steam’s most played games list ahead of expansion Phantom Liberty’s launch on September 26.
Data from SteamDB shows CD Projekt Red’s futuristic role-playing game has overtaken the likes of Grand Theft Auto 5 and Rust thanks to the release of Update 2.0, which completely revamps the base game with features such as a new perk system and improved AI.
Cyberpunk 2077 has a 24 hour peak of 169,711 concurrent players on September 25, with the strong figure coming even before its one and only expansion Phantom Liberty launches the next day.
Bethesda’s space epic Starfield sits ahead of it with 187,483 concurrent users in the last 24 hours, while other popular titles including Baldur’s Gate 3, Apex Legends, and the ever-popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive also beat out Cyberpunk 2077.
Popularity of the game started to increase as soon as Update 2.0 was released on September 21. Just 18,024 users were playing Cyberpunk 2077 at noon Pacific Time on September 20, but that number spiked to 90,241 a day later. September 22 saw 115,510 players online, followed by 151,915 the next day and 169,711 the day after.
This number is all but guaranteed to grow further when Phantom Liberty launches, especially given the critical reception to the long-awaited expansion. In our 9/10 review, IGN said: “Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty completes an immense turnaround for CD Projekt Red’s future RPG kickstarted with the anime spin-off, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and its latest 2.0 Update.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
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