Grinding Gear Games has finally released a sequel to its successful action RPG Path of Exile. Let’s take a closer look at its impressive metrics.
Path of Exile 2 sold 1 million copies of supporter packs (starting at $30) ahead of its Early Access launch on December 6, quickly amassing a huge audience of both core fans of the first game and new players. Due to such a strong interest, GGG warned users about queues and managed to resolve many issues within the first few of days.
According to SteamDB, Path of Exile 2 peaked at over 450k concurrent players on its launch day, eventually reaching 578,569 CCU on December 8. For comparison, the first game reached its all-time high of 229.3k CCU in July 2024 following the release of Settlers of Kalguur expansion.
Path of Exile 2 is also available on the Epic Games Store, Ps5, and Xbox Series X|S, as well as through its standalone launcher. So its total CCU count is higher, but GGG has yet to disclose any figures.
This already ranks PoE 2 as the 15th biggest Steam game of all time in terms of peak concurrent players, right between Apex Legends (624.4k CCU) and Valheim (502.3k CCU).
When only looking at 2024 releases, Path of Exile 2 ranks 3rd, behind only Palworld (2.1 million CCU) and Black Myth: Wukong (2.4 million CCU). The top 10* can be seen below:
*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 were 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
- Path of Exile 2 — 578.5k CCU
- Marvel Rivals (free-to-play) — 480.9k 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
Despite queues and server issues, Path of Exile 2 received a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, with 82% of the 26.6k user reviews being positive. Most players praised the game for its core gameplay, grim visuals, and innovations it tries to bring to the action RPG genre in terms of mechanics. However, some found PoE 2 “tedious” due to its slower pace compared to the first title.
According to Steam Scout, 66.8% of all reviews are written in English, followed by Russian (10.68%), German (5.39%), Polish (3.69%), and Portuguese – Brazil (3.26%).
It is worth noting that Path of Exile 2 is not an indie game, as many might think. Grinding Gear Games is owned by Tencent, which acquired a 86.67% stake in the studio in 2018. The Chinese tech giant believes the title has the potential to become an evergreen hit, just like its other recent release, Delta Force. The latter successfully launched in Open Beta last week, peaking at over 100k concurrent players on Steam but getting mixed reviews from users.