Cyberpunk 2077 dethroned by Rust after eight-week streak

Cyberpunk 2077, despite a buggy release, was doing pretty well on Steam until Rust came along.

After dominating the platform's sales numbers for eight weeks, Cyberpunk 2077 has had to give up the top spot to Rust, which is seeing a steady rise to popularity.

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Will Rust manage to kill Cyberpunk 2077?

We made over $1m on Steam on two days this week 🤯 pic.twitter.com/UTiqxgzdO0

— garry (@garrynewman) January 8, 2021

Despite being released back in 2018, Rust wasn't that popular initially. Compared to Cyberpunk 2077, the fundamental difference lies in the fact that it is a multiplayer-only survival game, whereas the latter is a single-player action-based role-playing title.

Before it's release, Cyberpunk 2077 managed to generate a lot of hype, more so because Keanu Reeves played a pivotal role as an in-game NPC. But the game was riddled with bugs when it came out and was unplayable on consoles. This incident lead to a lot of people asking for refunds.

The reason why Rust struck gold in terms of popularity can be attributed to a group of popular streamers who started streaming the game.

Streamers like Corpse Husband, Rachel "Valkyrae" Hofstetter, and Felix "xQc" Lengyel, and a few others, were the primary reason people followed Rust again. The exposure the game has received due to their streams has drawn players to the game.

That's not all, as the player count has skyrocketed in a very short time.

Rust on track to double it's previous high player count.. which was set like 4 days ago pic.twitter.com/1AP0hkJ6EH

— garry (@garrynewman) January 7, 2021

The game logged a record number of players on January 3rd, which was broken again on January 7th. These facts indicate the effect that the streams have had on players in generating interest for Rust.

In terms of popularity, Rust is slowly gaining the upper hand when compared to Cyberpunk 2077. But it remains to be seen how the developers and fans react to both games as the year goes on.