Outriders was a complete success for publisher Square Enix. According to the Steam Charts, over 120,000 were playing at the same time for a short time and only on the PC. Overall fell in the release month of April 3.5 million players in the co-op shooter with a sci-fi scenario.
That should almost certainly not correspond to the sales figures – after all, Outriders is part of the Game Pass on the Xbox and the publisher does not clearly state whether the free demo is included.
Still, the number is enough to plan a future for Outriders. According to Square Enix, the shooter is “well on its way, the company’s next big franchise to become”.
Outriders will go on
A product does not yet make a franchise, an Outriders 2 or a spin-off therefore seems almost guaranteed. The official twitter account also explains:
“We will continue to listen carefully and want to assure you that we will do everything in our power to improve and enhance your gaming experience in the coming weeks and months. We also look forward to expanding Outriders in the future.”
So some future for Outriders definitely seems certain. Shortly after the release, developer People Can Fly indicated that they still had enough stories up their sleeves for DLCs – although Outriders was intended as a complete experience instead of a live service game.
Regardless of new content, the studio is currently working on the patches – crashes, missing inventories and more shaped the somewhat bumpy launch.
Most popular class, total playing time, and more
The Twitter account for Outriders shares other statistics: Together, the players accumulated 120 million hours. On average, everyone played 31 of them
. The four classes were surprisingly fair: The assassin was the most popular fighter at 27.9 percent, closely followed by the pyromancer with 26.3 percent, the technomancer with 23.9 percent and, last but not least, the devastator with 21.9 percent.
Steam player numbers are falling
Nevertheless, it is already becoming apparent that Outriders was more of a flare than a long-running hit. Of the more than 100,000 simultaneous Steam players at the time of release, almost two months later only just under 3,500 are left. The high in the last 24 hours is 8,200.
The player average has dropped from 46,000 to 16,000. Most of the players with the 20 to 30 hour long story are probably through by now. If you then master the demanding expeditions as endgame content, there is not much left to do except repeat missions for loot or start from scratch with a new class.
It remains to be seen whether DLCs or updates can bring players back. We in the editorial team already have a clear idea of which features need to be patched.