Final Fantasy XIV has broken its Steam concurrent players record with over 47,000; after World of Warcraft streamer Asmongold tried the game.
SteamDB, a website dedicated to monitoring changes in Steam’s databases, notes the game reached 47,524 players; beating its prior peak of 41,200 players in June 2019. It should be noted these are purely numbers with the Steam version of the game, and not the stand-alone version offered by Square Enix. While there had been a sale in late May, the reason for the surge may be due to a streamer.
World of Warcraft streamer Asmongold announced he would be switching from the iconic MMO to Final Fantasy XIV. His first live streams with the game [1, 2] reached 2,663,330 and 1,985,928 total views respectively. SteamDB also notes large spikes in Twitch viewers for the game; including July 3rd around the time Asmogold streamed, despite the stream being categorized under World of Warcraft.
In spite of a biblical number of players following Asmogold as he played, all signs point to him having a great time with the game [1, 2]. An iconic World of Warcraft streaming jumping ship to a competitor is sure to sting Blizzard Entertainment, especially with recent news indicating Asmongold may not be the only player jumping ship.
Activision Blizzard’s Q1 2021 financial report revealed that monthly active users in Blizzard Entertainment games had fallen to 27 million that fiscal quarter; a 29% drop over three years. It should be noted this is not just all World of Warcraft, and other factors may have contributed to this (such as past controversial decisions by Blizzard Entertainment).
Meanwhile, Final Fantasy XIV is almost a rags-to-riches story. The game was poorly received on its 2010 launch, leading to it being re-launched as A Realm Reborn in 2013; with producer Naoki Yoshida taking on the director role.
MMO Population- utilizing API tools, Reddit, and other resources to calculate player and active player numbers- proposed that Final Fantasy XIV have an estimated 2.49 million active players. This would be 30,000 more than World of Warcraft (assuming both figures are accurate).
Officially, Final Fantasy XIV reached over 22 million registered players worldwide in April 2021. This would also include players who registered for the game’s free trial.
Final Fantasy XIV is available to Windows PC, (via the SE Store, and Steam), PlayStation 4, and coming soon to PlayStation 5, and Xbox One. A free trial is available. In case you missed it, you can find our Shadowbringers expansion review here (we can’t recommend it enough!)
The next expansion; Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, launches November 23rd.
Image: Twitter
