NC’s free-to-play MMORPG AION 2 drew a crowd on its first day. In a press release dated Tuesday, October 6, NC America said the game “amassed 400,000-plus concurrent players (CCU) on Steam” immediately after its global launch on Monday, October 5.
The tracking data lands just under that line for Steam alone. Citing SteamDB, Inven Global reports a Steam peak of 397,905 concurrent players on October 5, and notes that NC’s figure counts players on its own PURPLE launcher as well, since both platforms share the same global servers. Either way, it is a big jump from the 171,530 Steam peak Inven reported on October 1, during the paid Early Access period.
NC says AION 2 now holds the No. 1 spot on three Steam charts at once: Top Sellers, which ranks games by revenue, Popular New Releases, and Trending Free. The publisher adds that since Early Access opened on September 30, the game has stayed No. 1 on Steam’s global Top Sellers chart and on 15 territory charts, including the United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and Australia.
The full launch opened at 10 p.m. Korea time on October 5, which was 9 a.m. ET, after Founder’s Pack Advanced Access ended. AION 2 is free to play on Steam and PURPLE, with an optional monthly membership. NC’s pitch centers on flight: players can fly freely across a world NC says is 36 times larger than the original AION, dive underwater, and fight in the air in both PvE and PvP.
NC is also running its “War For Atreia” creator campaign through October 14, with 60 streamers across North America, Europe, and South America competing for their factions and Twitch Drops available while those creators are live.
The open question for any MMO launch is how many players stay after the first week, and the free-to-play model makes that first wave easy to join. For launch timing and what changed when Advanced Access ended, see RCG’s earlier report, AION 2 Goes Free-to-Play Worldwide on Oct. 5.
