Slay the Spire 2 surpassed 500,000 concurrent players on Steam just two days after its early access launch. The deckbuilding roguelike, developed by indie studio Mega Crit, has registeredpeak concurrent players of 526,793, making it the biggest launch of 2026 and the most-played roguelike in Steam history. Even more recent data suggeststhe game peaked at 557,054 concurrent players on 8 March 2026 within the release week.
The scale of success caught everyone, including the developers, by surprise.The game set a new Steam concurrent player record for a roguelike within its first 24 hours, hitting 282,314 players before that figure was completely overtaken in the days that followed. To contextualise the achievement:the original Slay the Spire reached its highest recorded concurrent player count of around 57,000 players, a record set only recently during the 2025 Steam Winter Sale surge.
The wider field offers striking contrast.The next closest 2026 launches include Resident Evil Requiem at 344,214 peak players, Mewgenics at 115,428, and Marathon at 88,337.After only having released on March 5, the same date as Marathon, the indie title has become the 20th most-played title by peak concurrent players on Steam ever.Sitting just behind Path of Exile 2 and Hollow Knight: Silksong, it claimed 20th place among the most-played games in Steam's history.
What makes this performance remarkable is that the game remains in early access and carries a relatively modest $25 price point.Developed by Mega Crit, Slay the Spire 2 is set 1,000 years after the events of the original game and brings new characters, cards, relics, and enemies while expanding the series' roguelike deck-building formula. One of the biggest additions is four-player co-op, which allows players to climb the Spire together for the first time, alongside new team-based mechanics and expanded gameplay systems.
The success was not entirely planned.Both Slay the Spire 2 and Marathon launched on Steam at the same time, leading to an unavoidable bit of friendly competition between the two releases. In a bit of tongue-in-cheek support, the Mega Crit X account posted: "Congratulations to the Marathon team on their launch.Don't let small indie passion projects like this pass you by just because Slay the Spire 2 is out."
As Slay the Spire 2's player counts skyrocketed over the weekend, the joke took on an unintended edge.Flagging the joke post on his personal account, Mega Crit co-founder Casey Yano admitted, "This seems a bit meaner than it was intended... To be fair I didn't think we'd actually pass Marathon in concurrent users".The studio clarified it "wasn't supposed to be shade, we were being sarcastic," adding it "did not know we'd blow up quite to the degree that we did".
The developers' surprise reveals something important about indie game markets."Our team is totally blown away by the amount of people who have been playing and sharing their love for the game we've been working on for the past half decade," Mega Crit writes. Even with the original game's legacy and passionate community, few would have predicted such explosive growth.The game is expected to remain in Early Access for more than one year as developers improve the experience and add additional content.