Dying Light 2‘s plan to win back hordes of zombie-fighting players with the Firearms Update and Reloaded Edition is a resounding success so far. Since releasing on February 22, 2024, PC player counts have spiked on Steam.
At the time of writing, Dying Light 2 has over 30,000 concurrent players, according to Steam Charts. In the past 24 hours, the number peaked at 30,167. While this is far off the zombie game‘s all-time peak of 274,983, it’s a welcome rise after months of dwindling active players.
The Firearms Update, which saw the significant addition of guns to the melee-heavy title, is bundled in with all previous updates plus the Bloody Ties DLC in the Reloaded Edition — all at no extra cost for people who own the standard edition.
Developer and publisher Techland is also running a free to play event from February 22-26, so you can try Dying Light 2 out even if you don’t own the standard version of the game.
Adding new weaponry was not a decision taken lightly, as director Tymon Smektała explained in our Firearms Update interview, but it seems to have worked as a lure to reel in players who had fallen out of love with the adventurous parkour and gory bludgeoning.
The free upgrade is designed to entice seasoned fans back as well as give new players the best experience possible when experiencing Dying Light 2’s world for the first time. Smektała told PCGamesN that Reloaded “represents the most comprehensive and refined version of Dying Light 2 Stay Human.”
Free expansions are typically positively received and effective in breathing life back into player counts, so it’s not altogether surprising to see Reloaded have such an impact. Arguably, it’s a net positive for everyone from publisher to end user; the game gets a significant rejuvenation, and we get to juice more hours out of our original purchase.
Ongoing support from developers is a valued trait in a time when many struggling multiplayer games can live and die in a single year. If you’re not ready to let this action RPG go, see our guide to all the Dying Light 2 factions to get back into the swing of things.
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