In just a few hours, Outriders has already tripled Avengers’ peak Steam player count

Outriders, the latest release from Square Enix and People Can Fly, has already hit a peak player count more than three times higher than Marvel’s Avengers on Steam.

Avengers was released by Square Enix in September 2020, but lukewarm reviews and a slow uptake meant that its all-time peak number of players was just 31,165 seven months ago, according to SteamDB.

Online shooter Outriders was released today, and already the game has shattered Avengers’ peak player count, hitting 111,953 on its first day of release.

At the time of writing, Avengers only has around 1,400 players currently playing on Steam.

Square Enix confirmed last November that Avengers had yet to turn a profit two months after release following “slow initial sales”.

The live service game’s performance suffered partly due to technical problems present at launch, which developer Crystal Dynamics attempted to address in a series of post-release updates.

In addition to the technical issues, a lack of post-launch content, including delays to planned expansions and next-gen versions of the game, contributed to a dwindling player count.

Originally announced at E3 2019, Outriders is a 1-3 player co-op shooter from Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly. The game supports cross-play across all formats, but this peak player total only counts Steam players.

Square Enix recently released an Outriders demo which gives players the opportunity to play the first few hours of the game, with all classes available to experience.

The game is also available on Xbox Game Pass, where it’s playable on consoles as well as Android phones and tablets via Xbox cloud gaming.

Currently, all first-party Xbox titles are released on Game Pass alongside their general releases, but third-party games typically arrive later. Outriders has been one of the few exceptions.