Now that Subnautica 2 has made waves among survival game fans, some are evidently going back to Unknown Worlds' first entry to explore its dangerous depths – so much so, in fact, it's broken its all-time player peak record on Steam.
It's been a solid eight years since Subnautica last hit the player peak it would hold for nearly a decade, but it's finally broken that figure now – likely thanks to its sequel's timely release and accompanying discounted bundle.
The new all-time player peak, which popped up just two days ago, as per SteamDB, sits at a neat 51,446 active users. The current number of players isn't all that far off, either… a nice 44,174 as I'm seeing it at the moment, to be precise.
Subnautica beat its all-time concurrent player record 8 years after release! from r/subnautica
This isn't all that surprising, seeing as Subnautica 2 has made quite the splash itself, with a whopping two million copies selling in just 12 hours following its May 14 launch.
It's in Early Access over on Steam and will be as Unknown Worlds continues to iron outs its wrinkles, add new content, and whatnot, which means it's also not as lengthy as its legendary predecessor – a fact that aligns well with the sudden influx of Subnautica players.
That 51,446 figure isn't as impressive as Subnautica 2's own number, though – heck, after just 1 hour, the sequel was about nine times bigger than the original already, with an all-time peak of 467,582 now.
I'd wager many of the folks moving over to the first game are newcomers, while others are returning to its unforgiving waters after years of awaiting Unknown Worlds' next title… a nice mix of familiar faces and fresh fans.
Who knows what's next for these numbers, really – we might see the first Subnautica attract even more survivors over the following few days as the hype around the sequel settles, or we could see a boost in both games' players. Only time will tell.
