New World is already the most-played Steam game of 2021

New World launched quite recently, but it’s already become the most played Steam game of the year. Amazon Games’ MMORPG has beaten the previous record by a significant margin — we’re talking hundreds of thousands.

As of the time of this writing, Steam Database counts an all-time peak of 707,230 concurrent players for New World. Current players are listed at 638,703, which isn’t even 10% less than the peak. Previously, the most played game on Steam was Valheim. The Viking survival game peaked at 502,387 concurrent players. That means New World has beaten the previous record by more than 200,000.

Perhaps that number of players so close to launch is what’s causing New World’s server issues and long queues. Potential players have been waiting for several hours to log onto a server in some cases, which means that peak concurrent number doesn’t include those who wanted to play but were unable to — it’s entirely possible for New World to break its own Steam record in the future.

For now though, Amazon is focused on alleviating those server woes. The developer is setting up new servers and offering a character migration for those who logged into a server that wasn’t their first choice. If you’re one of those players, you’ll have to opportunity to move your character free of charge in the coming weeks.

If you need some assistance getting your feet off the ground in New World, we can help. Whether you need to if you can swim in the game or if it’s releasing on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X, we have you covered.