No Man’s Sky is heading for the stars in its Steam launch. The space exploration game from Hello Games is reportedly experiencing some technical difficulties at the moment, but that hasn’t stopped it from shooting up to 212,620 concurrent players on its first day of release, according to Steam Stats.
As PC Gamer points out, that doesn’t even put a dent in the number of daily concurrent players you see in games like Dota 2, but that’s still a gargantuan turnout for a game from the 15-person team of Hello Games. For comparison, XCOM 2’s had 133,022 total peak players since its launch, Dark Souls 3 has had 129,975, and surprise megahit Stardew Valley only has had 64,632 players.
The game’s overwhelming Steam numbers give some indication at its long-term prospects. The only game in the same ballpark as No Man’s Sky for similar peak active users at launch on Steam has been Skyrim, which hit 280,000 concurrent players during its launch in 2011. That game went on to sell 3.5 million copies within 2 days at launch.
It’s unknown if No Man’s Sky will have similar legs, (or if we’ll ever know, given how many of its sales are digital.)