New World Hits New Concurrent Players Peak on Steam

Amazon Games' new open-world MMO New World is proving to be fairly popular since it was first released at the end of September. So popular, in fact, that it hit a massive concurrent players peak of 913,634 on Steam, which is the only place it is currently available, over the weekend. That data is specifically from SteamDB. As of writing, Steam's own statistics indicate that there are currently 774,383 players of New World on the platform, beating out Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the next video game on the platform with the most current players, by over 40,000 players.

It's hard to say what it is about the title that is drawing in so many players right now, but it seems fair to say that it's a confluence of factors all hitting at once. There's first and foremost the fact that more people than usual are stuck at home due to ongoing concerns about COVID-19. New World was also a highly anticipated MMO prior to its release that was delayed multiple times, and it's the largest effort to date from Amazon Games. Additionally, it's the first video game from the company that does not appear to be immediately sinking like a rock. In fact, it appears to be doing the opposite, with the developers seemingly working hard constantly to increase the number of worlds and server capacity. There are also plans to allow players to transfer characters to servers with lower population.

All that said, it's possible that this is merely a honeymoon phase of sorts where Amazon is determined to succeed. The long-term success of MMOs in the past have largely been about whether people stick around for late-game content, but it would seem like New World's mysterious island, Aeternum, and unusual setting of "what if magic experience while people were still exploring the world" have proven to be enough draw for now.

New World is currently available for the PC via Steam. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the latest and greatest video game from Amazon Games right here.

What do you make of the popularity of Amazon's new PC MMO, New World? Have you been playing it since it was released? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk about all things gaming!

[H/T GameSpot]