Final Fantasy XIV is going strong this year, and it’s far from stopping with the early access release of its latest expansion Endwalker on Dec. 3.
The game’s average active player base on Steam has been steadily increasing his year, and the activity bump caused by high-profile MMO streamer Asmongold has nearly doubled the number of players on the gaming platform last July.
The release of the latest expansion Endwalker has taken full advantage of that recently gained momentum, with the number of active players reaching its all-time peak since the game was added to Steam in 2014. The previous record was broken on July 1, with over 67,000 simultaneous players.
FFXIV surpassed 70,000 simultaneous players during Endwalker‘s launch day in early access, and the record was broken again yesterday with a peak of over 94,000 active players.
If the trend keeps going strong, December’s number of average players might almost triple compared to last March when it counted over 17,000, and double Asmongold’s bump last summer, when July averaged 37,000 active players.
At the time of writing, it’s the 13th game with the most active players on the platform, slightly ahead of Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege.
While the game’s popularity has been growing since the release of critically acclaimed expansion Shadowbringers in 2019, it attracted a great number of players last summer.
At that time, many World of Warcraft fans made the switch to Square Enix’s MMO after the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard due to alleged sexual harassment and abuse in the company. Asmongold, the most popular content creator on MMO games, accelerated that trend by streaming FFXIV instead of WoW on Twitch.
It’s likely FFXIV‘s average player base will continue to grow during the coming weeks, since Endwalker will officially release to the general public on Dec. 7. Until then, the expansion is only available for players who purchased early access.
