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Free-for-a-day promotion gains Mirage: Arcane Warfare over a million owners

Mirage arcane warfare

Mirage: Arcane Warfare is the sorcerous successor to Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, which became a cult hit thanks to its deep simulation of melee combat. Sadly, Mirage has been struggling – or it had, until the developers gave it away for free for 24 hours. 

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On September 6, Mirage was free-for-a-day – you could claim it, play it, and keep it, for nothing. It has a price again now, but it’s only £6.99 ($9.99) rather than its former tag of £22.99 ($29.99).

The result? According to SteamSpy, over 1.2 million people now own the game, compared to just 14,344 a little over a week ago.In an update, developers Torn Banner Studios called the promotion “a huge success.”

“Player numbers got massive, and much bigger than we expected! Almost a week later, server population is still very healthy, hovering at around 1,000 concurrent as of writing.”

SteamCharts shows that – unsurprisingly – Mirage had its all-time concurrent user peak during the promotion, at 43,152. That puts it at #82 in Steam’s all-time rankings by concurrent players – within two or three thousand players of the likes of For Honor, Dying Light, and Ghost Recon Wildlands. Though they didn’t have to go free to do it.

As Torn Banner say, user numbers settled down over the next week, and, worryingly, it looks like they might not have finished dropping. Their figure of 1,000 concurrents represents a recent peak – since they posted their update on September 11th, numbers haven’t once broken four figures, but it’s still too early to make any final conclusions. Let’s see what the weekend brings.

If you’d like to try Mirage at its newly reduced price, check it out on Steam here.