Millions of players flooded in to play Amazon’s new open-world MMO New World when the highly anticipated game launched on Steam in late September 2021.
New World peaked at over 900,000 concurrent players in October 2021, while averaging over 400,000 throughout the opening month. But like any multiplayer online title looking to survive in an oversaturated ecosystem, New World struggled to retain those numbers over time.
The game has seen some resurgences, typically when a big new bit of content drops, but how’s it doing right now?
New World player count (October 2023)
On Oct. 4, 2023, just a day after the game’s new season and expansion (both named Rise of the Angry Earth) launched, New World hit a peak player count of 55,321 players around 2pm CT, the highest player peak for the game in 2023, and the highest since December 2022.
It’s the second day in a row New World eclipsed 50,000 peak players, setting up October to potentially have its highest monthly average player number in over a year.
The season/expansion launch has rocketed the game up the Steam ‘most played’ charts, past long-standing titles like Lost Ark, Destiny 2, DayZ, and Rocket League. The increase in players has also resulted in a sharp revenue increase, with New World and the Rise of the Angry Earth currently holding the number two and three spot in the Steam ‘top sellers’ list sorted by revenue, behind the almighty money generator that is Counter-Strike 2, and beating out huge names like Call of Duty Baldur’s Gate 3, and Cyberpunk 2077.
This rise in player numbers can be owed to a huge number of highly asked-for features arriving with the latest expansion, including the long-awaited mounts, increased caps for player level, gear score, and trade skills, a new gear rarity known as Artifacts, and more new content in addition to the launch of a new season.
