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Lost Ark is already one among Steam’s most-played games. It has overtaken Apex Legends, Among Us, and Among Us in peak concurrent players, even before it becomes free-to-play later in the week.
According to SteamDB data, the game has 532,476 concurrent users, ranking it sixth on Steam’s all time list, behind only New World and Cyberpunk 2077. Amazingly, the game hit this number in less than 4 hours after it was released as a paid title, even though it will be free to play on Friday.
The sheer volume of users seemed to cause problems at first, with many reporting connectivity issues and longer queue times. Developer Smilegate decided to open another North American server soon after launch.
We have created a new server in NA East (Karmine) to address the increased queue times.
The team will monitor server queues and adjust if necessary.
— Lost Ark (@playlostark) February 9, 2022
Lost Ark is an MMO/ARPG that features isometric combat similar to Diablo. The game has 15 playable classes and a cinematic, story-driven campaign. It was first released in South Korea in 2019, followed by Japan and Russia. A North American and European release is expected to arrive this week.
The game is also getting huge viewership on Twitch, with SteamDB reporting that the peak was more than 1.2million people on its early access launch.
One key to streaming success of the game may be the free items Lost Ark players get for watching the gameplay. Early access content creators participated in the Legends of Lost Ark launch party, where they competed to unlock Twitch Drops and other goodies for viewers.
Twitch users who watch four hours can unlock a Battle Chest Item or an Arkesia Paper Hat Chest. A Helgaia Pet Chest and a Neugier hoverboard mount are also available. This incentive was made possible because Twitch’s owner Amazon funded the western release.
Lost Ark will be officially launched as a completely free-to-play video game at 9 p.m. Pacific/ 12 p.m. Eastern/ 5 p.m. UK (that’s February 12th at 4 a.m. AEDT).
We said that Lost Ark’s combat was “very, very good” and combines the best elements from ARPGs and MMOs. There’s also a “sense of wonder surrounding the game that has us extremely excited.”
Lost Ark is Amazon’s second major gaming success, following the launch of New World. It currently sits in fifth on Steam’s peak concurrent user lists. This was just one day after it became Steam’s most-played game of 2021.
New World’s popularity brought with it problems. Amazon had alarms going off for months after its release. It was forced to double its servers and fix other issues like gold exploitation and crash.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale
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