Dragon’s Dogma 2 cracks Steam top five, makes Capcom history on launch day

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the latest big game to hit the market and, just over a day after releasing, it is already making waves as Capcom’s next success story. Within 24 hours it was already sitting near the top of Steam, despite dealing with some sizable backlash regarding microtransactions and performance. 

Following its launch on March 22, Dragon’s Dogma 2 shot up Steam’s active player count boards, peaking at the fifth-ranked game by active player count with 200,175 players venturing out on a journey at one point, according to SteamDB. We obviously don’t have access to the player numbers on Xbox and PlayStation to add to that total, but Capcom should provide an update on sales at some point next week, which will give us an idea of how popular the game is overall. 

And speaking of popularity, DD2 has already made history for Capcom by becoming the company’s top single-player title ever released on Steam by peak player count, far surpassing the likes of Devil May Cry 5 and every Resident Evil game. It has also already beaten out Street Fighter 6’s peak as well and is very close to reaching Monster Hunter Rise’s all-time high of 231,360 players, which it should hit at some point in the next few days. 

That would leave only Monster Hunter World to topple at its height of 334,684 peak players if you want to only count full games. Otherwise, Capcom Arcade Stadium and 2nd Stadium technically hold that title, with both having peaks of over 460,000 players as free-to-play experiences, with all of these numbers coming from SteamDB. 

Dragon’s Dogma 2 was likely going to be an initial success regardless of its wider reception and only benefited from good review scores and early word of mouth. That goodwill was put into jeopardy at launch, however, as players—mostly on PC—criticized Capcom for releasing the game with considerable performance issues and microtransactions that are “an EA-level scumbag move.” It also didn’t help that most of those microtransactions provide convenient ways to work around some mechanics that players could view as frustrating, to the point where some players refunded the game or decided not to purchase it despite their interest. 

Capcom has already responded to this sizable community outrage, stating that fixing game crashes and other poor performance is the team’s “highest priority” while also clarifying that basically every item or bonus included in the microtransaction bundles can be unlocked for free by playing the game. This statement did not address every problem some players had, or explain why certain microtransactions were included at launch, though it should help most of the community rest easier since the company responded so quickly. 

Updates to iron out the biggest issues hampering game performance or causing major bugs will be released “in the near future,” which should only help bolster DD2’s player count as mixed reviews turn more positive.