The early access release of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker has seemingly pushed the venerable MMO to new heights, as the game’s all-time concurrent player record on Steam has been smashed for the second time this year – and the new count is more than double FFXIV’s previous peak from June this year.
Despite being out for over ten years now, or eight as A Realm Reborn, Final Fantasy XIV has continued to go from strength to strength in 2021 alone. The MMO reported over 22 million registered players back in April and has repeatedly broken its concurrent player count record this year.
According to SteamDB, the new concurrent player count for Final Fantasy XIV today is 87,831 – beating the previous record of 67,148 on July 18. By the end of June, the peak was still around 41K, meaning the MMO has more than doubled its concurrent players in just under six months – and added over 20,000 players to its previous record. On December 2, the player count was 40,232.
This influx of new and returning players is obviously due to the early access release of the epic new Endwalker expansion yesterday, which doesn’t officially go live until December 7 but anyone who pre-ordered it can play through the new content now – and presumably popular streamers like Asmongold brought their fanbases along with them, too.
I was not aware of this but I have been informed that the FF14 Endwalker server stability is my fault
That's right. This was all part of my plan.
If I can't do the MSQ, no one can
— Zack (@Asmongold) December 4, 2021
It’s important to note that we’re just going into the weekend as of the time of writing and Endwalker isn’t officially out yet, so it’s entirely possible one of the best MMOs on PC could break this player count record again – could it even hit 100K before the week’s out? We’ll have to wait and see.