The surge can probably be most attributed to the new anime.

Cyberpunk 2077 came out at the tail end of 2020. It was met with some less than favorable reviews from critics and even worse reviews by fans. It was buggy and a lot of the mechanics simply felt incomplete. Plus, the less said about the last-gen release the better. CD Projekt Red has been working on bringing the game up to snuff in the months since and it seems like their efforts are finally starting to pay off for some.

CD Projekt Red says that Cyberpunk 2077 is pulling in more than a million "new and returning" players every day this week.


These figures are more than likely for all platforms combined though Steam numbers alone show a very favorable uptick in daily players compared to the previous months. Steamdb says that the 24-hour peak hit nearly 90,000 concurrent players. Steam Charts shows that the average player count went from 10,400 in August 2022 to over 23,100 over the past 30 days. Sure, it's not exactly near the all-time peak of over 1 million concurrent players, which was at the game's launch, but it's still a very impressive surge nonetheless.

The latest increase in player numbers started earlier this month. It began right around the time that Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, a new Netflix anime, made its debut. Edgerunners is allegedly quite good, which probably helps matters a lot.

Naturally, an anime alone isn't the only reason for the uptick in players. CD Projekt Red have released several updates to Cyberpunk 2077 that have vastly improved the game since launch. The latest major release was the 1.6 "Edgerunners" update. This update fixed even more bugs, improved performance in some cases, added in some content from the anime, and also added in the highly requested transmog system. CD Projekt Red also held a showcase at the start of the month where they revealed the game's Phantom Liberty expansion set to be released in 2023. The studio also revealed that they are working on a complete overhaul for Cyberpunk's still mostly trash police system.

PC users can also currently pick up Cyberpunk 2077 for 50% off on Steam until September 25.