Lost Ark breaks one million concurrent Steam players a day after full release

Smilegate’s MMO Lost Ark has rapidly become one of the most played games on Steam. Just 24 hours after its full release, Lost Ark broke over one million current players, and those numbers will seemingly continue to climb.

The MMO hit the fourth-highest concurrent player record on Steam, only falling behind PUBG, Dota 2, and CS:GO at the time of writing, according to data from both SteamDB and SteamCharts.

Despite server issues resulting from the mass amounts of players attempting to enter the game at once, Smilegate still hosted hundreds of thousands of players at once. Lost Ark peaked at one million concurrent players at 10am CT on Feb. 12, according to SteamDB and SteamCharts.

The latest MMO sensation has also emerged as one of the top viewed games on Twitch. Lost Ark is the second-highest viewed category on the platform at the time of writing, averaging 249,453 viewers in the past seven days and peaking at 472,308 concurrent viewers on Feb. 9, according to Twitch Tracker.

Though the MMO has only been available for western players for a short time, Lost Ark was first released in South Korea on Dec. 4, 2019. Following a successful release in the Asia markets, Amazon released its newest title in the Americas and Europe on Feb. 11 after a short early access phase. Quickly accumulating over one million concurrent players upon its western release, Lost Ark seems to have resonated with players and fans across the globe.

Though World of Warcraft has long stood as the undoubted most played MMO of all time, recent competitors have risen to challenge its place at the top of the genre. Amazon’s other recent MMO, New World, similarly had an impressive release, though has plummeted in popularity since launch. Though Lost Ark is facing similar server overpopulation issues, the newest MMO has hit unprecedented peaks for its publisher.