Dying Light 2 is now available across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms. It's easily one of the largest releases of early 2022, but there has been some question as to just how popular the open-world action game would be. Early sales data for Dying Light 2 is rare, however, but there is one particularly interesting metric worth looking at. A comparison of Dying Light 2 and its predecessor Dying Light's concurrent player count on Steam show an astonishing increase for the sequel.
As of Friday evening, Dying Light 2's concurrent player count peak since its release has been an impressive 245,553 players. This number was provided by Steam via its own game tracking website. What makes that number striking is how much larger it is than Dying Light's Steam launch totals. According to SteamDB's archives for Dying Light, it reached just under 46 thousand concurrent players following its Steam launch in 2015. In other words, Dying Light 2 has over five times the total number of players on Steam as Dying Light did at launch.
Steam concurrent player count is, obviously, not a metric that conveys much. It doesn't represent overall sales, and it's limited to just a single storefront on a single platform, so it doesn't say anything about Dying Light 2's popularity on consoles. The Steam platform has also dramatically increased in popularity between 2015 and 2022, so it's somewhat unfair to compare the numbers directly.
With that said, it can't be denied that Dying Light 2 has capitalized on the success of Dying Light in a meaningful way. Techland's reputation as a major developer has grown in the past seven years and the result is a wave of energy for Dying Light 2 that no Techland game has seen before. Some additional sales numbers for PlayStation and Xbox platforms would be necessary to confirm that, but the Steam concurrent player totals aren't a mirage.
As PC gamers know, however, an initial spike in concurrent players does not necessarily mean a game will be successful long-term. It doesn't even necessarily mean it's a good game. Hype can drive early numbers, and those early numbers can just as easily be taken away by frustration.
Dying Light 2 has a lot to prove yet. These initial concurrent player totals on Steam are going to be celebrated by Techland, but the legacy of the open-world zombie will be proven by the overall reception to the game and how well Techland supports it post-launch. For now, however, Dying Light 2's success is apparent.
Dying Light 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
