Launching earlier this year to a solid reception in spite of its server issues, crossplay grievances, and major bugs, Outriders lost its player base within a few months. While the technical side of things put people off, it was the state of its endgame that drained its community. This week’s New Horizon update seems to have turned things around, at least for the time being.
According to the Steam Charts page, Outriders has reached a peak of 7,311 players since the update dropped. Examining the week leading up to the November 16 launch, Outriders on Steam languished in the territory of 300 to 600 players. This jumped past 1,000 after the announcement stream, shooting up to max peak of 6,546 players on launch day. This is huge for both Square Enix and People Can Fly, as the title had only been able to sustain players counts under 1,000 over the past three months.
This information only applies to the Steam release. We don’t have numbers for the console versions, but it isn’t unreasonable to expect there would be a surge of interest as word of mouth continues to spread. Outriders is still on Xbox Game Pass, so new players can jump in on both Xbox and PC. Regardless of the specific console player counts, Outriders seems to be in a position of goodwill ahead of next year’s paid expansion.
