Dragon’s Dogma 2, despite catastrophically bad optimization and very negative reviews, has already broken 200k concurrent players on Steam.

Horizon Forbidden West, a purportedly flawless port with very positive reviews, has so far topped out at just over 25k concurrent, roughly half the peak achieved by the first Horizon.

Things can certainly change. Also, Horizon is a two year old game at this point, although still one of the best looking games in existence.

But those numbers are anemic, especially in the wake of Sony’s last PC release (Helldivers 2) hitting almost half a million concurrent players.

Is it possible that the Sweet Baby Inc. story penetrated the mainstream far enough to influence consumer behavior? I’m not aware of any formal connection between HFW and SBI, but it does seem like gamers are becoming more conscious of both the woke taint on AAA and their own ability to avoid it.

Who knows. Maybe it’s just a mirage. A man can dream.