Last week, Lineage developer NCSoft launched its new MMORPG Throne and Liberty. Let’s take a closer look at its metrics on Steam.
Following its release in South Korea in late 2023 and in Asia earlier this year, Throne and Liberty launched in the Americas, Europe, and Japan on October 1. This version of the game is distributed by Amazon Games, which acquired the publishing rights last year.
Throne and Liberty received generally favorable reviews from critics, with an average Metascore of 75/100. Players, however, have been way more critical of the game, which currently has a “Mixed” rating (64% positive) on Steam based on 26k reviews.
The main points of criticism are aimed at monetization, with many users comparing in-app purchases and other economic elements to Asian pay-to-win MMORPGs. Some players also cite grinding, the leveling system, balance, and generic story as major issues.
Despite mixed reviews, Throne and Liberty managed to attract a huge audience at launch. According to SteamDB, it peaked at 336,300 concurrent players on October 6, making it one of the biggest games of 2024 on the platform by that metric.
NCSoft’s MMORPG currently ranks 4th in peak CCU among all new releases on Steam this year:
*Note: The list doesn’t include several games from the SteamDB charts: Banana, which peaked at over 917k concurrent users, because a) it is more of an app for speculations rather than a game (people keep it launched for hours to get tradable cards) and b) it is unclear how many of those are bots; and games that reached their peak prior to 2024 (mostly Early Access graduates like Sons of the Forest and V Rising).
- Black Myth: Wukong — 2.4 million CCU
- Palworld — 2.1 million CCU
- Helldivers 2 — 458.7k CCU
- Throne and Liberty (free-to-play) — 336.3k CCU
- The First Descendant (free-to-play) — 264.8k CCU
- Last Epoch — 264.7k CCU
- Once Human (free-to-play) — 231.6k CCU
- Dragon’s Dogma 2 — 228.5 CCU
- Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 — 225.6k CCU
- Content Warning — 204.4k CCU (reached its peak while being free-to-keep in the first 24 hours of launch)
Looking at other games published by Amazon Games, Throne and Liberty ranks 3rd in peak CCU, behind New World (913.6k CCU) and Lost Ark (1.32 million CCU).
NCSoft has yet to share any data on the number of unique players that have tried Throne and Liberty so far. It will be interesting to see whether the game can retain players in the long term and how it fits into the company’s portfolio. Not to mention that it is also a chance for NCSoft to expand its global audience, especially given that it still generates most of its income in South Korea. And the Lineage franchise remains the company’s main revenue driver.