Whether or not you believe in divine providence, the sudden upsurge of indie games seems to me as if some higher power decided that enough was enough and gave us all of these amazing, passionate developers who strive only to create art and to stick it to the man, whether on purpose or not.
And Slay the Spire 2 is one of those games, an indie title that came seemingly out of nowhere, building on top of its predecessor's positive legacy and ending up 10x-ing its peak player count, proving that all you need to do is make a good game, and it'll find a massive audience. Compared to STS1's peak player count of 57,025, Slay the Spire 2 has hit 574,638 over the weekend, a number that'd be the pride and joy of a billion-dollar corporate giant, let alone a small indie team.
The deckbuilding roguelike is also closing in on another indie sensation, Hollow Knight: Silksong, itself peaking at 587,150 and even crashing Steam at launch. Odds are that Slay the Spire 2 will be able to beat it out, though it has already been tallied among the top 20 most-played Steam games of all time.
The game opened to 177,000 concurrent players during the initial hours of its launch, sharply climbing to over 400,000 only a day later. This meteoric rise could keep going, though the curve has started plateauing a bit, unless it resurges by the evening.
STS2 has a 96 percent positive rating on Steam out of 24,500 reviews, almost tied with the previous game's 97 percent. Of course, it's still too early to draw conclusions for user reviews, but it's nonetheless safe to say that this game is being overwhelmingly well-received by fans and newcomers alike.
Indie games have become the golden standard of quality experiences as the AAA industry continues to release failure after failure, often spending incredible amounts of money only to shut its games down not long after launch. A recent example of a huge, experienced, corporate-backed title completely missing the mark would be Highguard, a game that is set to be permanently shuttered in only four days as of this article.
Previously, we had Warner Brothers losing hundreds of millions of dollars on failed gaming projects, sinking so much money that it slowly but surely scaled back its gaming enterprise. Concord was another massive catastrophe and probably one of Sony's biggest fumbles to date, while Sony-backed Marathon is also being attacked for failing to captivate a broader audience, despite solid launch numbers.
Whichever way you cut it, indies are the ultimate kings of video games in 2026. Numbers like these were unfathomable just a few years ago, but nowadays are so common that it's not even newsworthy anymore. And that's a good thing, because art should be rewarded and passionate developers given the attention and funds they deserve to continue enriching global culture with their amazing creative works.
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