Key points
- Path of Exile 2 surpasses half a million players on its second day in Steam's top 15 for concurrent players.
- Despite a rocky Early Access launch, Path of Exile 2 has garnered positive reviews from fans.
- The full version of Path of Exile 2 will introduce more content, including 12 classes and a six-act campaign, likely increasing player numbers.
Path of Exile 2 has already cracked Steam's top 15 for most concurrent players at any time, logging more than half a million players in just its second day. Despite the very difficult Early Access launch, Path of Exile 2 is proving incredibly popular, surpassing beloved games like call of Duty AND Fallout 4 and becoming only the sixteenth game in Steam history to surpass the half-million mark.
After a slight delay compared to the original November date, Path of Exile 2 had its Early Access launch on December 6th. While not the full launch of the full game, the Early Access version still boasts a three-act campaign, a deeply intuitive character customization system, and six classes for players to choose from as they search for epic loot.

Related
Like Path of Exile 2 it aims to avoid a common criticism of ARPGs
Path of Exile 2 aims to avoid a common criticism of live-service ARPGs with its approach to the story and endgame, even while it's in Early Access.
According to data collected by SteamDB, the action RPG had a concurrent player count of 538,027 players as of 8:00 PM UTC on December 7. This places the action RPG in 15th place among the games with the highest concurrent player count ever on Steam, placing it right among Battle Royale hero shooters Legends of the Apex and survival crafting game Valheim, with the possibility that he could climb even higher in the rankings. The success is not entirely unexpected, as some expected long queues Path of Exile 2 based on early reports of over 1 million Early Access redemptions.
Highest Steam peak player count of all time
- PUBG: Battlegrounds – 3,257,248
- Black Myth: Wukong – 2,415,714
- Palworld – 2,101,867
- Counterattack 2 -1,818,773
- Lost Ark – 1,325,305
- Dota 2 – 1,295,114
- Cyberpunk 2077 – 1,054,388
- Elden Ring – 953,426
- Bananas – 917,272
- New World: Aeternum – 913,634
- Hogwarts Legacy – 879,308
- Baldur's Gate 3 – 875,343
- Goose Goose Duck – 702.845
- Apex Legends – 624,473
- Path of Exile 2 – 538.027
What's notable about the success story of the action RPG is that it still has such a high player base Path of Exile 2is the approximate launch on Steam. While it's generating very positive reviews from fans, with 82% of over 13,000 players giving it their approval, the Early Access launch has been hampered by a number of technical issues. Many of these issues may actually be tied to the game's unexpected popularity, as the development team behind Grinding Gear's official early access launch live updates took note of the inundation of the “overwhelming amount of Exiles” and, as a result, of the game server crash. The development team has been monitoring the situation and approving batch login attempts to try and mitigate the issues, but they don't seem to be turning away too many players.
While the player count is already impressive, the game's popularity is likely to only increase once its full version arrives. The features in Path of Exile 2The full version of will double both the length of the campaign and the number of playable classes available, with 12 different classes and the full story planned in six acts, along with more areas, monsters and bosses. Additionally, while the Early Access version costs between $30 and $100 to access, with three different support packages available, the game is likely to increase its player count with the planned free-to-play nature of its full version. There is no set date for the game's full release, but the development team expects the early access period to last at least six months.