No Man’s Sky released to record-setting 2016 stats, getting more that 212,000 active players on Steam when it launched last Friday. According to Steam Database, an official Valve-made resource for Steam statistics, No Man’s Sky had a total of 212,613 concurrent players the day of its official release.
The sci-fi survival and adventure game has seen the highest amount of players of any other game released through Steam in 2016. XCOM 2, released in Feb. 2016, has a concurrent player peak of 133,022 players, meaning No Man’s Sky has a concurrent player number 58.3% higher than XCOM 2. In comparison, Doom (2016), another popular and anticipated game, has a peak of only 44,271 simultaneous players.
Though No Man’s Sky’s stats seem low compared to the likes of titles such as DOTA 2 or CS:GO, at the time of publication it sits comfortably as the third most-played title on Steam. Although player statistics are a great resource for determining the popularity of a given game, it should be noted that they are not representative of accurate sales numbers.
Although Hello Games received mixed criticism from players experiencing performance issues for the PC version, No Man’s Sky seems to be enjoying success. The sandbox space exploration is the game’s largest draw, as it provides players with quite literally an entire universe to explore.
No Man’s Sky may not be perfect, but it is certainly one-of-a-kind; feel free to check out what we think of it in our review, or share what you think will become of its top player statistics in the comments.