Lost Ark breaks 500,000 concurrent players on Steam and it's not even free-to-play yet
Lost Ark has been incredibly popular in its first few hours of launch, so much so that players couldn't actually get into the game.
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The launch of Lost Ark in Western countries is one that's been a long, long time coming. It took eight years for the game to get properly localised and released in the West, thanks to the work of Amazon Game Studios. Unsurprisingly, the ARPG MMO saw a massive influx of players just as it went live.
On Steam, where Lost Ark is available exclusively, the game peaked at 532,476 concurrent players, according to SteamDB. In fact, the initial pre-load unlock and new downloads took players longer than they should because Steam's servers got hammered.
Lost Ark is free-to-play, but you can only access it now by buying any of the four founder's packs, which start at $15 and go as high as $100. The actual free-to-play launch doesn't kick off until Friday, February 11 - so we can only imagine how much higher those numbers are going to get.
This was a similar story on Twitch, where the game peaked at a whopping 1.273 million concurrent viewers, easily becoming Twitch's number one game during that period, according to SullyGnome.
Lost Ark appears to have made a case for itself with two massive audiences. Hungry Diablo fans, who have been waiting for a large, high-production ARPG for years, and MMO players who aren't already on board with World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy 14.
Look out for more Lost Ark coverage from VG247 as we play more of the game. For now check out our guide on which class to choose in Lost Ark when you start the game.