After years of anticipation, Sons of the Forest has finally launched on Steam yesterday, and players have been showing up for the release in droves.
Let me hit you with the big numbers: Sons of the Forest reached a concurrent player count of 350,105 earlier today, as SteamDB shows. That's the 22nd biggest concurrent player count in Steam's history, and the second-biggest number for a survival game in the platform's history, only behind Valheim. It's the third most-popular game on Steam right now, sandwiched between the recent hit Hogwarts Legacy and the venerable Dota 2. Heck, Steam's servers even seemed to buckle under the initial weight of all those players.
Those players are having a good time, too. Just one day after release, players already put down 18,921 verified reviews, 87% of which are positive, giving the game a "very positive" rating by Steam's metrics. That's particularly impressive given that this is an Early Access game whose inevitable bugs, glitches, and missing features are due to be patched up over the course of development.
Sons of the Forest was originally due to launch in full - not just Early Access - this week, but the devs ditched the burden of putting out version 1.0 in order to avoid yet another delay. The Early Access period is scheduled to last "around 6-8 months," and it seems to be doing its job in helping players accept the game's early issues.
There's one particular review I want to call out here, from user Ahselrey, who says: "I would die for Kelvin" Everybody loves big dumb idiot Kelvin.
You too can have friends like Kelvin with our guide to all the Sons of the Forest companions.
