Almost 2 million concurrent Rocket League players achieved in first FTP weekend

You'd have to be living under a rock to not know about Rocket League's free-to-play arrival that saw an influx of players from the Epic Games Store. We knew that this would be a big week for the rising Esport title, but the question of "how many" still loomed over all of our heads

Long story short: the results exceeded all expectations

Free to play came out on Wednesday, and every day since, we've hit a new concurrent player record. Thursday was the 1st day we passed 1,000,000 players at peak time

Before the FTP arrival, the highest numbers we saw teetered around 500,000. This occurred at the height of the "stay at home" Coronavirus orders in late march

As player numbers continued to inflate, the community began to wonder how big this weekend could be for Epic Games' newest exclusive title

Since the prime weekend hours have now passed, the peak concurrent players has set a definitive benchmark: 1.85 million players

As Europeans started heading off their assorted gaming gadgets for the night, the online players declined to a less extreme number

The prospect of 2,000,000 players this weekend is officially over - but the numbers posted is still way stronger than most expectations

More interesting in my opinion was the fact that Sunday's online player count was substantially higher than on Saturday. You'd expect hype to die down at some point and numbers to start levelling out; it's clear we haven't hit that point yet

Often enough we'll see titles like Call Of Duty and Battlefield have free betas which will allow them to hit staggering numbers in a localized environment. The fundamental difference between those games and Rocket League is the fact that the latter is staying free-to-play forever

The exact same recipe which allows Fortnite to boast the highest western player count is being implemented in Rocket League. Epic Games' acquisition and guidance might be the best thing to happen to the competitive scene

With the Fortnite x Rocket League collab hanging around until the middle of October, expect player numbers continue the strong uptrend - and potentially hit a new all time high next weekend

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