Hades 2, the roguelike action-RPG from Supergiant Games, was released in early access on Steam and Epic Games Store Monday. The much-awaited sequel has since climbed the charts to become one of the most played games on Valve’s platform this week. In fact, the game has already more than doubled the all-time peak concurrent player count of its predecessor, Hades. Supergiant Games has not yet revealed the timeline for complete v1.0 launch of the game, but Hades 2 is expected to arrive on PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo consoles later.
As spotted by VGC, Hades 2 reached a peak concurrent player count of 79,276 players within nine hours of release, which means the game doubled the player count of Hades on the first day of its early access launch.
According to SteamDB, the all-time peak concurrent player count of Hades stands at 37,749. The site’s chart shows that Hades 2 has reached an all-time peak concurrent player count of 103,567. At the time of writing, Hades 2 early access has 62,984 active players on Steam.
According to developer Supergiant Games, Hades 2 already features more environments, foes, and fully-voiced characters than the full version of the original game, with more content to follow. While the early access version of Hades 2 offers more than just a taste of the game, Supergiant has noted that the true ending of the game’s story won’t be available until the full launch of v1.0.
The developer will monitor feedback from early access players and plans to release the first major update for the game later this year. Hades 2 is expected to be in early access “at least through the end of 2024,” the studio said.
On Steam, the reception to Hades 2 has been uniformly positive. At the time of writing, the game’s consensus stands at “Overwhelmingly Positive” after over 11,000 user reviews.
Hades 2 was first revealed at The Game Awards 2022, showing off familiar rogue-like dungeon crawler gameplay of its predecessor. The sequel features a new protagonist in Melinoë, the immortal princess of the underworld, who takes on the Titan of Time. The game promises new locations, challenges, upgrade systems and more. Hades is currently available to buy in early access on Steam and Epic Games Store.