“Welp, the Cyberpunk 2077 anime made me want to give the game another shot,” said our Wes Fenlon just this week. (opens in new tab) He wasn’t alone, as tens of thousands have returned to CD Projekt Red’s 2020 RPG shooter following the release of Studio Trigger’s Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime.
Sites like SteamDB (opens in new tab) put Cyberpunk 2077’s peak concurrent player count—on Steam alone—at over 85,000 in the last 24 hours. Those are player numbers it hasn’t seen since January of 2021, with daily highs of something more like 10-15K more normal. Not surprising, given that its launch could be politely termed a disaster. (opens in new tab)
It’s a sizable boost for a game that claims the highest all-time concurrent player count for a singleplayer game on Steam at 1,054,388. It’s also the data point I needed to say that, combined with a timely sale, the Netflix player bump is very real.
We saw it last December when Arcane caused League of Legends’ player count to boost by nearly 50%. Dota 2 saw boosts after the release of Dragon’s Blood seasons 1 and 2. Heck, CD Projekt Red’s own The Witcher beat its launch day numbers (opens in new tab) after the release of its Netflix series.
So, yeah, you could say that Cyberpunk 2077 (opens in new tab) is getting a bit of a second launch at the moment, with numbers that put most gaming debuts to shame. It’s all very clearly orchestrated and marketed, much like a launch as CP2077 just got its 1.6 Edgerunner update (opens in new tab).
You can get a cat (opens in new tab) in that, which rules. You can also get the Edgerunners jacket (opens in new tab) from the Anime.
There are other updates for CP2077 in the future, with the game director saying that its broken police will get a complete overhaul. (opens in new tab)
Amid all of this you might be forgiven for not noticing that Keanu Reeves is coming back for a whole Cyberpunk 2077 expansion called Phantom Liberty. (opens in new tab) Guess he actually wasn’t (opens in new tab) put off by the sex mods.
I call this a second launch for Cyberpunk 2077, but Fraser Brown thinks that the expansion will be CP2077’s chance at salvation. He says it’ll need to be “beyond polished” because it could well be the last real shot at salvaging the game’s reputation. (opens in new tab)
