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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s launch had double the active players of Odyssey

It appears gamers prefer to explore the world as a Viking rather than as a Greek mercenary

The Assassin’s Creed series has changed drastically over the past few years, beginning with the launch of Origins back in 2017. Ubisoft’s effort to evolve and reinvent the series’ gameplay was rewarded with high sales numbers, with Odyssey predicted to be “one of the top performing Assassin’s Creed games of all time”. It looks like Valhalla is continuing this trend, as Ubisoft has revealed the number of active players on launch day was double that of Odyssey.

Though we don’t have precise numbers, we can make an educated guess based on Odyssey’s player count on Steam at launch. Odyssey reached a peak of over 62,000 players on Valve’s platform – while this doesn’t tell us the whole picture by taking into account console player counts or the overall number of active users on launch day, we can safely assume Valhalla saw at least 120,000 active players during its first day.

This result is even more impressive when you consider that Ubisoft opted not to sell Valhalla on Steam, making it the first Assassin’s Creed game not to launch on Valve’s storefront. Ubisoft expects the number of active players to rise even further as the next-generation consoles debut this week, the studio says in a press release.

“We are humbled by the reception from the players and extremely proud of what our teams have accomplished with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which builds on the amazing success of its predecessors,” says Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft. “In the context of COVID-19, shipping Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on no less than seven platforms is an incredible achievement for all of the teams involved around the world.”

The critical reception to Valhalla appears to be matching the success of Odyssey. According to the review aggregate site OpenCritic, both Odyssey and Valhalla are sitting at an average score of 84. In our Assassin’s Creed Valhalla review, Richard Scott-Jones awarded the game a strong eight out of ten, saying: “I’ve enjoyed Valhalla very much. It’s certainly the best Assassin’s Creed since Origins set the new format, and maybe even the best ever.”