Slay the Spire 2 surpasses Elden Ring Nightreign as Steam's biggest roguelike, as early access sequel sees launch players rise 162,000% over the original game

Well, Slay the Spire 2 is out, but going by the monumental launch numbers, you probably already knew that. Developer Mega Crit celebrated by showing us the contrast between the sequel and its forebear in terms of audiences and, um, the team's picked up a few fans.

In 2017, the first Slay to Spire arrived to a whole 193 concurrent players. The community grew in the intervening years, but it started small. Fast forward to now, and the sequel has brought in 314,425 concurrents within 24 hours of going live, per SteamDB. That's a hefty increase – and rising still.

162,914% of an uptick so far, in fact. Pretty decent numbers, I think it's fair to say. Players were booting the game up so fast, Mega Crit struggled to keep up. The official Twitter account posted when the peak was at 179,456, pointing out the 92,982% jump.

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Those were early days, however. The company's prediction about Slay the Spire 3 still stands, though. "StS3 is on track to hit 166,861,777 concurrent players by 2035," jokes the tweet.

That might be a little ambitious, but only by a small amount. Slay the Spire 2's gotten off to a miraculous start, outstripping Elden Ring: Nightreign's peak of just over 313,000 concurrent players. It's comfortably the most successful roguelike launch we've seen on the platform, outdoing the likes of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Hades 2 and Mewgenics, and leaving the peaks of Megabonk, Vampire Survivors and Hollow Knight in the rear-view mirror, at least on Steam.

In the realm of indie competition, it has a way to go to topple Hollow Knight: Silksong's mammoth 578,510 concurrent players, but that's not out of the realm of possibility. The deckbuilder's only in early access too, and improvements will be thick and fast in the coming months. A good, but stressful day at Mega Crit.

"This seems a bit meaner than it was intended": Slay the Spire 2 lead backtracks on Marathon "small indie passion projects" joke as the roguelike unexpectedly dominates Steam.