MultiVersus tops GTA 5 and Apex Legends to become the number four game on Steam

After various alphas and betas with limited access, MultiVersus is finally available to the full public in open beta, and it has made an immediate splash on Steam.

As I'm writing this, MultiVersus has reached 142,086 concurrent players on Steam (via SteamDB), making it the fourth-biggest game on the platform right now, ahead of the likes of GTA 5 and Apex Legends - the latter of which is also free-to-play, which makes it a pretty strong comparison point for MultiVersus.

MultiVersus is also posting the biggest player counts of any fighting game in Steam's history, beating out the previous concurrent player record of 44,303, set by Dragon Ball FighterZ over four years ago. (Though DBFZ was a full-priced game.)

The only games ahead of MultiVersus on Steam right now are Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Lost Ark, all of which proved to be astronomical hits well out of the platform's normal order, setting concurrent player records well over 1 million.

The MultiVersus player count continues to rise, too, and has not yet hit its peak at the time of publication. While public player counts are not available on platforms like PlayStation and Xbox, there's no reason to suspect that the free-to-play fighter is faring any worse on consoles, and every player gets to join a single pool thanks to the game's crossplay support.

For those who'd already been playing in the closed beta, today's update has some major new considerations, including a big nerf to Taz's tornado ability, and the introduction of LeBron James as a playable character.

If you're looking for more of the best fighting games, you know where to click.