Outriders launch dwarfs Marvel’s Avengers

Outriders has launched big, although tech issues are hampering its release.

People Can Fly’s looter shooter hit over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam, where it is currently the top-selling game at £49.99.

As a point of comparison, Square Enix’s high-profile flop Marvel’s The Avengers hit a peak concurrent player count of 28,145 on Steam when it launched in September. It’s currently averaging 1000 concurrent players over the last 30 days.

Square Enix will no doubt be delighted with Outriders’ early day success, but it hasn’t all been plain sailing. The game has suffered server issues this week that have made it difficult at times to log in – and even booted solo players out mid-game.

There are also crash issues, and People Can Fly was forced to disable automatic matchmaking between PC and console due to synchronisation issues. Cross-play won’t be re-enabled this weekend, Square Enix has said.

Work is being done to try to improve server stability, and I’ve managed to play this morning without interruption – although it does take a while to log in.

I’ve been playing Outriders on and off since it launched on 1st April and have decided to stick with it after rinsing the demo.