What you need to know
- CD Projekt RED issued thanks to fans for a surge of 1 million players every day this week.
- The uptick in players is owed mostly to the well-received Netflix Edgerunners series that launched September 13.
- Success is also in part to the Edgerunners 1.6 update that launched September 6 which brought new content and fixes to Cyberpunk 2077.
Update (Sept. 26, 2022)
In the days since this article went live, Cyberpunk 2077 has reached even higher heights of popularity on Steam, overtaking The Witcher 3 in all-time concurrent players, and beating Modern Warfare 2 on the Steam sales charts. The Witcher 3 at its peak raked in 103,329 concurrent players on Steam, two years later Cyberpunk 2077 has surpassed it with 136,724 concurrent players on Sunday 25 September. A truly incredible comeback for CD Projekt RED's ill-fated release.
Original article (Sept. 23, 2022)
Cyberpunk 2077 was arguably the most hyped release in gaming in recent times, launching in 2020 to much spectacle on Xbox and Windows PC.
The fanfare was short lived. The game was plagued with issues at launch, alongside widespread accusations of misleading marketing. It was temporarily removed from sale on some platforms, as the firm worked aggressively to deliver the game fans expected. With piles of updates behind it and a certain Netflix show infront of it, CD Projekt RED's landmark futuristic sci-fi game now seems to be experiencing something of a renaissance.
Each day of this week Night City has been visited by 1 million players, both new and returning. We wanted to use this opportunity to thank you for being with us and playing the game. Thanks, Chooms! 💛 pic.twitter.com/zqggblztF8September 21, 2022
Every day the past week, Cyberpunk 2077 has seen 1 million new and returning players prowling the streets of Night City. The numbers stated are combined across all platforms but Steam alone has reported average concurrent players doubling over the past month.
With the Edgerunners 1.6 release earlier in September, the game is in the best state it ever has been, but that alone hasn't caused the mass return of players to the game. The Edgerunners anime dropped on September 13 to critical praise and has been an incredible success for both Netflix and now the Cyberpunk 2077 game. At the time of writing, the show is sitting at a tasty 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, beating out many competing seasonal shows from the likes of Star Wars: Andor, Rings of Power and House of the Dragon with its critic's ratings.
Players coming into the game at this stage will be met with a rather different experience than that of the launch, with many improvements being made to the game over the past two years. Performance issues on older consoles have mostly been eradicated, and 60 FPS mode is now available on Xbox Series S. Most excitingly, CD Projekt RED has this month announced an expansion coming to Cyberpunk 2077 at some point in 2023 "Phantom Liberty" which will be as big as DLC launched for Witcher 3. Edgerunners 1.6 will be the final update delivered for both console generations signaling Cyberpunk 2077's move to new generation development only.
For more information on what you can expect from the Edgerunners 1.6 update, see our coverage here if you're considering jumping into the game for the first time, or perhaps returning from the launch fiasco. Both the developer's hard work with regular updates and the new publicity from Netflix has breathed new life into Cyberpunk 2077, could they perhaps convert this success into a No Man's Sky redemption arc? Let's wait and see.
