The launch of the Endwalker expansion for Final Fantasy 14 has led to the MMO breaking its own concurrent player count records on Steam.
As seen on SteamDB yesterday (December 4), Final Fantasy 14 set a new concurrent player record, hitting 94,540 users, all playing at once. This record is not entirely representative of Final Fantasy 14‘s player base – the game is available through its launcher, PS4, and PS5 platforms – but offers a glimpse at how the launch of Endwalker has propelled the game’s popularity.
The previous Steam record for concurrent players on Final Fantasy 14 was 67,148 back in July. Back then, Square Enix revealed that Endwalker had already received a 160-180 per cent increase in pre-orders compared to the last expansion, Shadowbringers.
The rush of players looking to get their hands on Endwalker was rightly predicted by Square Enix, though the studio warned that it would bring a range of issues. Due to its popularity, Square Enix said Endwalker would bring a “high likelihood of congestion that will result in Worlds reaching maximum login capacity and lengthy wait times when logging in”.
Over on Twitter, the #FinalFantasy14 trend is rife with players sharing their position in the queue. While some face waiting behind thousands of other players, some are reporting getting kicked out due to error messages after waiting for hours in the line.
The massive demand for Endwalker has even reached out into several genres, including the professional fighting game scene. This week, fighting game tournament CEO 2021 set aside a “retirement home” for players to go and play Final Fantasy 14.
In other news, Stalker 2 will demand a whopping 180GB of space on Xbox platforms when it launches next year. This is likely due to the game using Unreal Engine 5 and new lighting technology.
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