Cyberpunk 2077 has the fourth highest peak player count on Steam

Despite having one of the most problematic releases of the year, and releasing across two consoles and being sold on three digital stores, Cyberpunk 2077 has still managed to have the fourth highest peak player count on Steam alone.

SteamCharts measured the peak player count for Cyberpunk 2077 at an incredible 830,387 players on December 14th, 9:00 AM ET. This is in addition to the reported 8 million pre-orders across all platforms, and other early post-launch purchasers.

the system as-is hurts consumers, developers and journalists. guess who it helps? a hint: 8 million pre-orders https://t.co/rAPZhjZrUB
— Cecilia D'Anastasio (@cecianasta) December 15, 2020

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Cyberpunk 2077 is both a monumental success and problematic disappointment

The news surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 has oscillated between two incredible extremes. On the one hand, the game has achieved incredible record-breaking sales, and will almost certainly be one of the best selling games for Q4 of 2020.

On the other hand, Cyberpunk 2077 has been panned for its bugs and performance issues, has prompted Microsoft and Sony to issue refunds for the digital versions of the game, and has led to Sony delisting it from its digital store.

The last week has been a period of intense highs and intense lows for Cyberpunk 2077, often coming one right after the other. By all accounts, the game is a gem, with excellent writing and strong gameplay in an interesting setting. But it’s a gem in need of serious polishing, and the rough edges are taking a lot away from the overall experience.

A corporation convincing 8 million people to preorder a completely broken product that they brutally exploited workers to produce and didn't let anyone review before releaee, and then getting away with it while making obscene amounts of money... is, in fact, very cyberpunk.
— Senior Oops Engineer (@ReinH) December 16, 2020

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Nonetheless, Cyberpunk 2077 earned a top spot on Steam

Despite its issues, Cyberpunk 2077 has still earned its spot as one of the most played games on Steam. At the time of writing, Cyberpunk 2077 has still managed to have a 24 hours peak of over half a million players, making it the third most played game on Steam.

This puts Cyberpunk 2077 over games that usually appear in the top spots, including PUBG (187,541), Grand Theft Auto V (163,896), and Rainbow Six Siege (89,028).

In addition to this, it’s overall peak is only beaten by the long-standing records of DOTA 2 (1,291,328 in March 2016), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (1,305,714 in April 2020), and the incredible record by PUBG (3,236,027 in January of 2018).

It seems that despite the problems, the hype surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 was enough to drive enough people to the point of wanting to try the game out for themselves.