The soulslike Lords of the Fallen recently struggled with low player numbers on Steam. Now a major update has been released that has led to a significant increase in active players.
What is the state of the game? Lords of the Fallen was released in 2023 and is the loose successor to the 2014 title of the same name. The game shows significant influences from FromSoftware’s Souls games, thus resembling Dark Souls or Elden Ring. It was a top seller on Steam, despite mixed reviews.
While Lords of the Fallen had around 43,000 players at release on Steam, this number rapidly declined in the following months (via steamdb.com). A month after release, only just over 4,000 users were playing, and that number has since dropped even further.
Just a week ago, the game was languishing with weak numbers of 100-500 users. However, a major update has now been released that gives Lords of the Fallen the version number 2.0. This quickly led to a significant increase in player numbers and an improvement in reviews.
Co-op players have reason to rejoice
What does the update bring? Version 2.0 is not just a small patch, but brings changes that are certainly prompting some players to give the game another chance.
Especially co-op players can look forward to this. The centerpiece of the update is a new cooperative mode, where both participants in a session share progress. The only requirement: they must be in the same New Game and have defeated the same number of bosses with a tolerance of one boss difference.
Additionally, the update introduces the possibility of using the “Friends Pass”. In this case, only one of the two players needs to own Lords of the Fallen, while the other can simply join the game.
This and several other fixes, such as improved movement in combat, are resulting in a huge rise in players. At least in relation to the last few months. Just a week ago, a maximum of 500 players were online; last weekend, thanks to the update, Lords of the Fallen reached a solid 11,000 users (via steamdb.com).
The CEO of the publisher CI Games thanked for the sudden interest on x.com:
10,000 concurrent players, 18 months after launch. Just a week ago we were about 500. This means a lot to us. Thank you very much to everyone who believed in us, supported us, and joined us. We will always be there for you.
Marek Tyminksi
The extra work has therefore paid off and attracted more players again. Have you played Lords of the Fallen again? Feel free to let us know in the comments. MeinMMO author Christos Tsogos was already very impressed at release: Lords of the Fallen is finally the competition to Dark Souls that I have been waiting for 10 years
