After a short technical test, Supergiant Games started this week with a bang by releasing Hades II into Early Access. The sequel to the studio’s 2020 action roguelite has been eagerly awaited by fans of the original, but it turns out the audience for Hades 2 is much bigger than anybody was expecting. Not even 24 hours into Early Access, the concurrent player count for the game has already smashed through the lifetime record of its predecessor.
As first reported by VGC, within nine hours of Hades 2’s Early Access release the game had already reached nearly 80,000 concurrent players. For context, the all-time peak of the original Hades is 37,749 according to tracking site SteamDB. That concurrent player peak was reached in September 2020, when Hades came out of Early Access and into its full version. Hades 2 has obliterated that in only a matter of hours, and since VGC first reported the incredibly high player count, the number has only grown. At the time of writing, the all-time peak for Hades 2 is 86,331 players, and the number keeps going up.
Even with only a day having passed since Hades 2 entered Early Access, it isn’t hard to see why so many people are already playing it. The technical test for the game made it clear that everything fans of the original loved is preserved in the sequel, and there’s a lot more layered on top as well. New protagonist Melinoë brings a fresh charm, along with new mechanics to learn as you fight through the underworld once again. That’s all capped off with even more hot gods to swoon over as you play.
From early impressions it seems like Hades II already has a wealth of features to discover and enjoy, so I’m sure we will see the player count reach some new astounding milestone well before the game reaches 1.0. As for how long Early Access will last, Supergiant says you can expect it to go till at least the end of 2024.
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