Lost Ark is the second biggest game on Steam right now

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Smilegate's new MMO surpassed 1.325 million players

Lost Ark
(Image credit: Amazon/Smilegate)

Lost Ark's concurrent player count surpassed 1.3 million players this past weekend, putting it second in all-time concurrent players on Steam.

As you can see over on SteamDB, Amazon and Smilegate's new MMORPG peaked at just over 1.325 million players, two days ago on February 12. This is nothing short of an astounding success for the Western launch of Lost Ark, which has finally come westward after first launching in Korea in 2019.

Lost Ark originally launched in Tuesday, February 8 last week, exclusively for Steam users on PC. That was just the early access window for paying players though, but it didn't stop Lost Ark from smashing past 500,000 concurrent players in just under three hours, a storming success for an early access launch period.

It wasn't until Friday, February 11, that Lost Ark finally went live for everyone, no matter if they'd paid for Smilegate's new game, or not. Therefore, it appears the peak concurrent player count of 1.325 million players came roughly 24 hours after the free-to-play launch window opened up for all Lost Ark players.

That's not to say there haven't been problems for Lost Ark, however. While the usual queue times were perhaps to be expected, the free-to-play launch window for Lost Ark was delayed twice by a number of hours last Friday, due to missing characters from the MMORPG. Now Smilegate's got a handle on the whole situation, and Lost Ark's looking like a success story for the Korean developer.

Check out our Lost Ark preview to find out why Smilegate's new MMO is blowing up on Steam.

Hirun Cryer
Hirun Cryer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.