Split Fiction, the most recent co-op recreation from writer-director Josef Fares and his Hazelight Studios, launched on March 6 and had a huge opening weekend.

The sport reached a peak of 259,003 concurrent gamers on Steam on Sunday, March 9. That makes it the No. 2 recreation of all time revealed by EA when it comes to Steam concurrents, surpassed solely by the free-to-play battle royale recreation Apex Legends. These information factors come from SteamDB and have been first noticed by (*2*)

The highest 5 EA video games on Steam ranked by peak concurrent gamers are:

1. Apex Legends – 624,473
2. Split Fiction – 259,003
3. Battlefield V – 116,104
4. EA Sports activities FIFA 23 – 110,878
5. EA Sports activities FC 25 – 110,026

It additionally bears mentioning that EA prevented Steam for some time, selecting to as a substitute publish its video games by itself PC platform. The corporate introduced its video games again to Steam in 2019.

Hazelight’s final launch, It Takes Two, reached a peak of 71,039, so Split Fiction is many elements greater than that recreation. Not solely is Split Fiction extraordinarily fashionable, nevertheless it’s getting rave critiques. Right here at GameSpot, our Split Fiction assessment scored it a ten/10. On GameSpot sister web site Metacritic, Split Fiction (91) is EA’s first recreation to have an mixture ranking of 90 or above previously decade. 2012’s Mass Impact 3 was the final recreation to rank 90 or larger.

Not everybody who’s enjoying Split Fiction essentially purchased a duplicate of the sport. That is as a result of the sport makes use of a Buddy’s Move system whereby just one particular person has to purchase a duplicate. Additionally of notice is that Split Fiction can be obtainable on PS5 and Xbox Collection X|S, so the Steam numbers solely account for a share of the sport’s whole attain and recognition.

Sony and Microsoft don’t share concurrent participant numbers, nevertheless, and as of but, neither EA nor Hazelight have launched any official participant or gross sales numbers for Split Fiction.

The sport has large footwear to fill, as It Takes Two sold a whopping 23 million copies. Split Fiction’s improvement price range was “nearly double” that of It Takes Two, according to Fares.

After Fares made the critically acclaimed Brothers: A Story of Two Sons with Starbreeze, he branched out and based his personal studio, Hazelight. The corporate is greatest recognized for co-op-only video games, and has launched three video games up to now: A Method Out, It Takes Two, and Split Fiction. All three have been revealed by EA underneath its EA Authentic label. Hazelight stays an unbiased studio.

Fares has been outspoken concerning his dislike of microtransactions and live-service components, that are two of the principle pillars of EA’s enterprise. Hazelight has solely simply launched Split Fiction, so there isn’t any phrase but on what the corporate would possibly make subsequent or if it is going to stick with EA.

Past video games, Hazelight has partnered with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for an It Takes Two film for Prime Video.