Mind the asterisk
Less than 24 hours after release,Fallout 4holds one of Steam’s most coveted records. Well, kind of. It holds that record if you don’t count other games that constantly beat outFallout 4and every other game.
At the time of writing,Fallout 4has 408,996 players concurrently playing. That’s the most ever for a non-Valve developed game. The previous best was fromGrand Theft Auto Vearlier this year when it amassed around 360,000 people simultaneously playing. Before that, Bethesda’sSkyrimheld the mantle of most concurrent players.
Fallout 4‘s numbers will surely grow throughout the day and week, but it likely won’t touchDota 2orCounter-Strike: Global Offensive. Those titles routinely have more than 500,000 people playing at any given time. What would be monumental for any other game ever is just everyday business for those two.
Still,Fallout‘s impressive figure begs the question: “Is anybody working today?” I mean, it’s a Tuesday during normal working hours. Did most of these people just call in sick? What if the UPS driver who’s delivering my copy stayed home to playFallout 4? I wouldn’t like that very much even if it’s to contribute to a record-breaking effort.
