The remaster of Halo: Reach came out on PC today, marking the series’ return to the platform after 12 long years, and Steam users have given it a Spartan’s welcome, with over 100,000 people playing at the same time making it one of the top five games on Valve’s storefront.
The game’s only been out since 1:00 p.m. ET and already it has more concurrent players than PUBG, Grand Theft Auto V, and Rainbow Six Siege. It’s currently the most played game not made by Valve, and in third place overall with 139,997 players at the time of writing, behind only Counter-Strike and Dota 2. Those two Valve games have upwards of 300,000 concurrent players.
It’s also ahead of Destiny 2, another sci-fi shooter which recently came to Steam after Bungie split from Activision and the game was removed from the Blizzard game launcher. Destiny 2 debuted at just over 220,000 concurrent players, but has been slowly declining as the game’s latest season draws to a close. It has TK players today. Of course, it’s a tribute to Bungie that the only game overtaking it today happens to be the last Halo it made before leaving Microsoft to become an independent studio.
While Halo: Reach is the first game in the series to come to PC and Steam, it won’t be the last. 343 Industries, which took over the franchise from Bungie, will slowly be porting the rest of the Halo: Master Chief Collection to the platform, where Microsoft says that each game in the series up through Halo 4, including their multiplayer modes, will be playable in 4K at 60fps.
Halo: Reach is also out on Xbox One today where I’ve been playing it, and will continue to, unless Santa Clause decides to gift me a new graphics card this month. I’ve only spent an hour with it, but so far so good. Halo: Reach is one of my favourites in the series, and I’m excited to get to grinding through the remastered version’s new multiplayer progression because it’s 2019 and I’m a broken man who needs meters to fill up in order to feel contented.
Leave a Reply