Subnautica 2 is finally here in early access, and it's immediately blown its predecessor's all-time concurrent player record on Steam out of the water, with a massive peak I can hardly keep up with as I type.
At the time of writing, Subnautica 2 launched a little over one hour ago, and in that time, it's already accumulated a whopping 463,021 concurrent players on Steam (thanks, SteamDB). To put it into perspective, the first Subnautica's highest ever concurrent player peak on the platform was 51,156, so its sequel immediately hit that, and then did nine times better – and that's not even counting its players on Xbox.
This success means Subnautica 2 has also very speedily cemented itself as one of the biggest games of the year on Steam. It's already left the likes of Resident Evil Requiem and Crimson Desert behind it (with all-time Steam peaks of 344,214 and 276,261, respectively), and it's closing in fast on Steam's biggest hit of 2026 so far, Slay the Spire 2.
As we reported at the time, Slay the Spire 2 quickly surpassed 165,000 concurrent players on Steam at its launch, before going on to reach even greater heights – specifically, capping out at a whopping 574,638 a couple of days after release, when the weekend rolled around and more folks had the opportunity to dive in.
I'd certainly expect this to be a pattern Subnautica 2 follows, too – it only makes sense that more people will play a game when they're not busy at work or at school – but what's astounding right now is that Unknown World's latest appears to be set to steal Slay the Spire 2's crown today. I've lost count of how many times I've had to update its concurrent player peak during the time I've been writing this article, and I suspect it won't be long after publishing this that it goes even higher.
Needless to say, it looks like Unknown Worlds has a hit on its hands – only 85 user reviews have been posted on Steam at the time of writing, but so far, it's looking Very Positive, with 90% of users giving it a thumbs up. It doesn't look like it'll be long before it overtakes Slay the Spire 2, but just how high can it climb?
