The MMORPG Lost Ark has once again reached the top of the most played online role-playing games on Steam in September 2023. Developer Smilegate says that the number of new players has increased by 225% in the past week, and the number of returning users by even 321%. It is believed that a new update is behind the surge in player numbers.
How is the player count of Lost Ark developing?
- Lost Ark was released in February 2022 on Steam and had a peak of 1.3 million concurrent players as a free-to-play title at launch.
- The number remained relatively high for an MMORPG until December 2022, with up to 350,000 concurrent active players. However, Lost Ark was under constant suspicion of being plagued by bots. Therefore, the high player counts on Steam should be viewed with caution.
- After December 2022, player numbers consistently declined for 7 months, until in July 2023 only about 24,300 average players were online. In the last 2 months, this number has slightly increased: from 24,390 it has now gone up to 32,401.
Lost Ark celebrates rising player numbers
What Smilegate says: The developers stated on September 22 that they saw an increase of 225% in new players and a rise of 321% in returning players. (via game.mk).
Lost Ark believes it’s due to the “The Eclipse” update, which was released on September 13. Smilegate says that with the patch came also reliefs for players to reach item level 1580. It is believed that this change significantly contributed to the increase in player numbers.
The remarkable increase in player count was measured in the week after the update.
While Steam Charts show the upswing, they also reveal that the player numbers are rising at relatively low levels:
Lost Ark rises again on Twitch
What else stands out? On Twitch, Lost Ark was able to achieve a strong value of over 191,000 concurrent viewers at the start of the patch, on September 13 and 14, which has not been seen in months.
This seems to be due to the new raid, which brought endgame content to Lost Ark and attracted many players.
Small upswing, but far from glorious times
What’s behind it: With the rise, Lost Ark has once again positioned itself on Steam ahead of Mir4 (Number 2) and Black Desert (Number 3 on Steam).
It should be noted that Lost Ark is also so large on Steam because it only runs on Steam, while MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XIV (4th place) or The Elder Scrolls Online (6th place) also function on other platforms and different launchers. The also Steam-exclusive New World is currently ranked 5th among the MMORPGs on Steam.
Despite the rise in the last 2 months, Lost Ark is still far from the “heydays” at launch.
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