fall-guys’-steam-player-count-skyrockets-a-day-after-it-becomes-an-epic-exclusive

Fall Guys went free-to-play yesterday, alongside a move to Epic Games Store exclusivity and delisting from Steam, and the change was a giant success—so huge that it wreaked havoc upon the game servers, which struggled (and, at instances, failed) to take care of the sudden new load.

The first signal of hassle appeared yesterday morning, when developer Mediatonic stated on Twitter (in typical Fall Guys trend) that some gamers had been unable to entry matchmaking companies following the free-to-play changeover.

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A few hours after that, customized lobbies had been briefly disabled so builders might proceed engaged on the game; by yesterday afternoon, issues had been apparently getting higher however the studio warned that “there may be some teething issues whilst all bajillion of you try to play at once.” Then earlier at the moment, Mediatonic took the “daily” part of the in-game retailer all the way down to appropriate some points, which apparently brought on some gamers to get booted from the game.

“When loads of people try to get back in at once it gets a lil spicy, but you will be let in eventually dw,” the studio tweeted.

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Server crushes are nothing new within the video games enterprise, however Mediatonic could be forgiven for not seeing this one coming. Fall Guys is a pair years previous now—it was launched in August 2020—and whereas it is clearly nonetheless successful, its days as a runaway phenom are previous. The move off of Steam and into Epic Games Store exclusivity—Epic acquired Mediatonic in March 2021—might even have moderately been anticipated to have a cooling impact. But that did not occur: A Fall Guys rep informed Kotaku that the game hit a document concurrent participant depend yesterday, which put “high loads on our servers and affected some of our matchmaking systems periodically throughout the day.”

What’s particularly fascinating is that this additionally occurred on Steam. Fall Guys is now not obtainable for buy there however stays accessible to anybody who already owns it, and people gamers have jumped again into the game in droves. According to Steamcharts, the height concurrent participant depend over the previous 24 hours was only a hair beneath 60,000, the very best it has been since October 2020 and practically 5 instances the height concurrent participant depend in May 2022. And that is simply Steam—it would not keep in mind present gamers and newcomers on the Epic Games Store, plus console and cell platforms.

That’s a severe bounceback for a game that had largely fallen off the radar previous to yesterday. If Fall Guys can construct on that shock second win, it might conceivably turn out to be a fair greater success than it was in 2020.