The big picture: The hugely popular South Korean hit Lost Ark was recently released worldwide on the Steam platform. The February 11th release has already been an enormous success, attracting more than one million concurrent players in just over two days. The game's rise in popularity has quickly catapulted it onto Steam's list of most popular games, putting it in the same company as well-established titles such as DOTA2 and CSGO.
Lost Ark is anything but a shiny new game from Amazon. The top-down isometric action RPG was originally released to South Korean audiences in 2019. The MMO game was favorably received and selected for the 2019 President's Award, the top honor at the annual Korea Game Awards. The game's recent worldwide release as a free-to-play title on Steam from Amazon and Smilegate has been nothing short of a success, with the game already becoming one of Steam's most-played titles ever.
Despite Lost Ark's early access paywall, the game sold over 500,000 copies. Within two days of the game's free-to-play (F2P) release, Lost Ark gained an enormous following and stacked up more than 1 million concurrent players. As of this writing, the game's peak concurrent player count sits at just over 1.3 million.
The Lost Ark provides players with the opportunity to create one of several customizable hero classes, each with its own sets of unique skills. Like other games in the genre, players must hack, slash, and blast their way through hordes of enemies to earn experience and develop new skills. Upon reaching a certain level, players gain access to end-game content and other unique challenges.
Unlike other games, Lost Ark provides the player with far more options to customize and personalize their character. New players can select their character's gender, facial features, skin tones, outfits, hairstyles, and even eye colors.
According to the game's developers, players who really want to make their avatars stand out from the crowd can buy various cosmetic items via microtransactions. Players can also obtain the same rare and special items available via the game store just by playing. Of course, like most games of this type, getting the bling they desire can be a long, grinding road.