What just happened? It looks as if Back 4 Blood will prove just as popular as the legendary Left 4 Dead 2 when it arrives this October. The game's early access beta brought in almost 100,000 active players on Saturday night, and that's only counting Steam---it's also available on PlayStation and Xbox consoles.
Turtle Rock Studios' upcoming four-player co-op zombie FPS began its closed access beta on August 5. The only people able to participate have been those who pre-ordered the game and anyone who managed to secure an early code.
According to tracking site SteamDB, Back 4 Blood reached a concurrent player count of over 98,000 on Saturday. PCGamesN notes that figure made it the eighth most popular game on Steam, putting it ahead of Warframe, TF2, Ark: Survival Evolved, and Rainbow Six: Siege.
The achievement came despite some server issues leaving people unable to join and what sounded like a zombie shouting a racial slur. WB Games later confirmed that the latter was due to two audio clips playing simultaneously, and it is working to fix the problem.
The Back 4 Blood's closed access beta ends at noon PST today, but on Thursday, August 12, the four-day open beta begins. Expect to see even higher levels of engagement during this period as it's available to all players. It includes two full PvE missions, five of the eight survivors, all weapons, and PvP.
Back 4 Blood arrives on October 12 for PC. It's also coming to last-gen and current-gen consoles.