New Shadowverse Game Breaks Its Steam Record While New Set Worries Players

The new Infinity Evolved set for the digital TCG Shadowverse: World’s Beyond dropped Thursday and managed to break its record for concurrent Steam players in the first few hours. However, while player enthusiasm around the game’s 2nd set is high, some Shadowverse gamers who have been logging in have noticed some causes for concern regarding the game’s economy for F2P players or low spenders.

Released on June 14th, Shadowverse: World’s Beyond managed to achieve a previous peak of 109,246 players on Steam. As of this writing, the game has now shattered this benchmark in the wake of Infinity Evolved going live, with over 120,000 concurrent players on Steam. Typically, games tend to reach their highest point before settling into a more stable player base when they are released. It is only rarely that subsequent content updates can draw enough players to rival that initial spike in enthusiasm.

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The Infinity Evolved hype seems enough at the moment to overcome the lingering negative perceptions this new game has had since its release. Shadowverse fans review-bombed Shadowverse: World’s Beyond when it was released, frustrated because it effectively replaced another version of the Shadowverse TCG on Steam. Not only were fans unhappy about having to restart their collections, but frustrated players also found the economy to be worse for low-spending players in this new version.

Released by the same developer, Cygames, in 2016, Shadowverse CCG currently has a “Mostly Positive” rating on Steam. Recent reviews for this 2016 version reflect fans’ split perception on the direction Cygames is taking the economy for Shadowverse TCG.

“Huge fan of the game, mostly played on mobile so no hours here. Came to comment because the 2nd generation of this game – Shadowverse Worlds Beyond – has a horrible economy, much worse than this game,” wrote Steam user ffeeii963 in a review of Shadowverse CCG. “However, since support for this game has ended there really isn’t much of an incentive to play here so I’m forced to play in that h-llhole where games are flooded with Artifact Portal: the only viable f2p deck. pls fix the economy.”

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The new Infinity Evolved set has revived criticisms of the game’s economy after players discovered changes that they weren’t expecting after it went live. Weekly tournament rewards appear, at first glance, to have been nerfed, and some players had expected more free packs upon logging in.

Players are worried that the game’s already lackluster economy will become even worse for low-spending players in the future. While the game is drawing tons of new players with this expansion, will these players actually want to stay if it’s hard to obtain the cards they need without spending a lot?

“Seeing this and comparing this to old SV, while people defend this, is crazy,” wrote Reddit user Balverin. “What if someone starts in like 6 months? They will be so behind anyone else, no real catch up. They really make it easy to hate this game. In old SV, I put in so much money, bc the f2p experience was actually nice and now I don’t feel the urge to spend at all, since it feels so empty, really sad about it tbh.”

As is common in these types of games, low-spending or free-to-play players will need to spend their resources wisely, and shouldn’t expect to play with every card they want right away when downloading Shadowverse: World’s Beyond.