Hogwarts Legacy Could Have a Long Legacy
Hogwarts Legacy seems determined to prove the “no such thing as bad press” mantra true. Because despite massive (and frankly, justified) controversy, and despite having not yet been publicly released, the game’s playerbase is massive. How massive? According to SteamDB, the game’s population peaked just a few hours ago, at 489,139 concurrent players.
The game’s staggered release is a result of its pre-order structure. Those who picked up the deluxe edition got to play 72 hours early. Well, not everyone, but that’s another story. But the stats that exist now, that’s just for the PC platform – Hogwarts Legacy is reaching every major console too.
SteamDB also offers insights for another platform: Twitch.tv. As I write this, the game has over 500,000 concurrent viewers split across all streams of the game. Its all time peak more than doubled this, at 1,258,495 viewers.
To put these numbers in perspective, you can compare them to Steam’s top 100 chart. It doesn’t appear there, due to the whole not-actually-a-released-game thing. But we can compare numbers – and it would easily slip into the top three.
Now, we’ll obviously see a huge influx of players once release day actually hits. It wouldn’t be surprising if the game topped the charts for a while – but how long it’ll stay there is another question. What’s the most recent game you can think of that had a similarly massive launch? For me, it’s Elden Ring – and you have to scroll down a bit on Steam’s top 100 to find that one. Currently, Elden Ring is beating out stuff like Crab Game, but is surpassed by the likes of Wallpaper Engine. When Hogwarts Legacy goes public with a new audience, will we see a similar rise and fall? Will it be a slow process, or a quick flash? Voice your answers in the comments down below!