Summary
Whetheryou want to call it “the future of RPGs,“or perhapsthe frontrunner for 2025s Game of the Year, or even the best thing since sliced bread itself, there’s no denying the popularity ofClair Obscur: Expedition 33.
The game is so popular thatmany retailers have quickly sold out of physical copies, a demand that the developers themselves couldn’t even have anticipated. It’s also managed to do something that new releases have rarely, if ever, been able to do.
The Numbers Don’t Lie, And They Spell Great Things For Expedition 33
As of this writing,Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has reached a new peak player concurrent on Steam of 145,063 players— a figure that it managed to set just 10 hours ago.
A week ago, on April 27, that player count was 121,422 players, a figure that,according to TheGamer’s Sam Woods, only 177 other games have managed to achieve, or 0.0016 percent of the games on Steam.
That means, within one week, the game increased by 23,641 players. What makes this noteworthy is the fact that, normally, games will decrease in concurrents over time. Of course, there are outliers,like when Marvel Rivals reset its own mark, orwhen Half-Life 2 surged in popularity after it was made free.
For instance,Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which had an all-time peak of 64,825, has slowly declined in concurrents into the single thousands. Evensomething as massively popular as Monster Hunter Wildswas has declined,including just days after its launch. But Clair Obscur has managed to surge in popularity seemingly on a daily basis.
It’s a testament to the type of game that Sandfall has managed to put together, that more and more people are jumping in. Who knows what sales numbers will look like once physical copies return?
