Well it’s official. Outriders is absolutely smashing it, with over 2 million people having downloaded the brand new IP in just a week. But was this ever really in doubt? Combine the calibre of Square Enix’s inimitable RPG complexity with gun play of Bulletstorm, or Gears, and you’re in for a wild ride. Developer People Can Fly have just such experience, and so it seems, Outriders is as good to play as it sounds on paper.
2 million downloads in a week. Just 7 days, and roughly, the entire population of Vienna has downloaded the game. That’s 285k people a day, 12k an hour, or, if you’ll indulge me, 3 people ever single second. But don’t believe me, here’s what the devs said,
People Can Fly share Outrider’s incredible success on Twitter
Without contest, this is an incredible achievement, particular for a new IP. Of course, this level of attention comes with it’s own bagage. At somepoint over the last 7 days, the People Can Fly servers almost buckled under the strain, with one of the devs taking to Reddit to clear the air,
To cut a long story short, while our planned-for infrastructure was ready for the raw number of total expected players, the speed with which those players were joining the demo during those first few hours surpassed even our expectations. So, while our backend systems scaled automatically and according to player population demand, they were unable to scale fast enough at the time.
thearcan, 4th March, Reddit
But, by the looks of the tweet, a patch is on the way. And what is a demo, if not a golden opportunity to learn and tweak before asking would be customers to part with their hard earned cash? It’s sure beats paying for some half baked pre-release piss-pile of code, naming no names. Whatever the strategy was behind Outriders, it’s paying dividends, and no doubt the sales will follow suit when the game releases proper on the 1st of April.
The good news is we’ve played it to death, so if you’re keen to know what all the fuss is about, take a peek at our recent play-through of the demo and witness, first hand what will undoubtedly be one of the best selling games of this year.
“Video games are great. I should know, I’ve played some.”
Olly S, July 2020