Mega Crit's Slay the Spire 2 has reached a massive peak of 574,638 concurrent players on Steam, momentarily crashing the storefront during its recent launch period. The sequel to the 2019 rogelike hit entered early access on March 5, outperforming major titles like Helldivers 2 and Valheim in peak player counts.
The massive surge in traffic caused a 30-minute outage on the Steam platform on launch day. Developers at Mega Crit admitted they were blindsided by the scale of the success following the game's release.
Development hurdles and player backlash
The road to launch involved significant technical shifts, most notably a mid-development engine swap. Following Unity Technologies' 2023 announcement regarding new 'runtime fees,' Mega Crit abandoned the Unity engine in favor of Godot. The studio's reaction to the fee proposal was blunt, stating, "We have never made a public statement before... That is how badly you fucked up."
While the launch was a commercial triumph, the early access period has seen significant friction with the player base. Recent updates to the game's public beta branch triggered a wave of review bombing on Steam.
Players reacted negatively to patch v0.100.0, which introduced several balance reworks. The backlash caused the game's Steam rating to plummet from 97 percent within a 24-hour window.
Players have also identified several game-breaking exploits during the first six weeks of release. One bug allowed users to increase their health points above 999,999,999, though the error ultimately reset player health to 1 HP. Mega Crit has been actively patching these vulnerabilities to stabilize the early access experience.
