Divinity: Original Sin II Breaks CRPG Records on Steam
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A combination of a successful Kickstarter campaign, a year of Early Access that had just enough content to make people excited and want to see more, clever marketing, and actually producing a highly polished game seem to be doing the trick for Larian Studios, since according to PCGamesN, their latest title in the Divinity series – Divinity: Original Sin II had the strongest CRPG launch in Steam's history. Check it out:
While sales figures from SteamSpy are always to be taken with a liberal pinch of seasoning, it’s safe enough to say that approximately 300,000 people own the game on Steam, although many (43k, give or take) are Kickstarter backers. What is a more relevant metric of launch success is concurrent players, and the game clocked in at just over 75,000 players last night. While dwarfed by competitive juggernauts such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, that still placed it as the 4th most active game on Steam at the time.
To put that figure into further perspective, the original Divinity: Original Sin - a respectable succeess - saw just under 22k players peak at launch, and even Obsidian’s old-school hit Pillars of Eternity saw under 42k at its best. In short, Original Sin 2 has seen one of the most successful launches of any old-school RPG on Steam. If not the top record holder, then it’s definitely in the top three. A fully deserved position.
Let’s also not forget that Steam isn’t the entire picture. Original Sin 2 also saw a DRM-free release via GOG, which surely bumps up the figures by another few thousand. While I’m not sure of the exact metrics GOG uses the fill its Popular Games ranking on the store front page, Original Sin 2’s multiple editions take up 4 of the top 10 slots.
Important to note that since the article went live, the concurrent player peak has risen to around 85,000, making Original Sin II's success even more impressive.
