Final Fantasy XIV’s Steam player-base is at an all-time high just one day after Endwalker entered early access

Just one day after the early access launch of the Endwalker expansion, Final Fantasy XIV accumulated over 90,000 concurrent Steam players on Saturday at the time of writing — an all-time high for the game on Valve’s platform, according to SteamDB. The Steam version’s previous highest concurrent player count was roughly 67,000 this past July, which was brought on by a mass exodus of World of Warcraft players to Square Enix’s immensely popular MMO.

SteamDB also indicated that Final Fantasy XIV was the 9th most-played game on the platform at the time of writing. Currently, it stands within striking distance of Grand Theft Auto V, and is also less than 50,000 players away from Steam’s third most-played game, Amazon’s New World.

It should be noted that these numbers only include the Steam version of Final Fantasy XIV; other platforms are not factored into this player count. In reality, the total count is probably much higher. The Friday morning that Endwalker launched, Square Enix issued a statement claiming that the MMO was experiencing more network traffic than ever before.

“We have been experiencing the highest level of server congestion since the start of FINAL FANTASY XIV’s official service, and there is severe congestion on all Worlds,” read the statement.

It’s also worth noting that this news comes shortly after just the early access launch of Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion. Endwalker’s full release is next week on December 7. It seems incredibly likely the game’s player-base — whether on Steam or other platforms — will only skyrocket further once that date passes.