Deathloop has looped in 5 million players

On Twitter, Arkane revealed its time-bending game Deathloop has hit 5 million players. 

The shooter about a pair of rival assassins caught in a time loop on a mysterious island released in 2021 as a PlayStation 5 and PC exclusive. While the game garnered strong reviews and some award nominations (and wins) that year, its sales impact has been a little more difficult to determine. 

It's the first real time that Arkane has spoken about the game's numbers in a substantial way. But the developer doesn't disclose how much of Deathloop's present numbers can be attributed to its release on Xbox Series X | S or PlayStation Plus' Extra tier in September 2022. 

"Thank you for joining us on this adventure to Blackreef," wrote Arkane. "We hope you enjoyed your stay."

Along with the player count, Arkane revealed some interesting player statistics. Included in that list are the number of times players have found specific rare weapons, and the most common type of death. Fittingly for a first-person shooter, 79 percent of players have died from bullets. 

In total, 5 million players equates to the game's lead character Colt Vahn spending nearly 71,000 years on the game's island of Blackreef. 

What Deathloop says about Arkane's future

Compared to the Dishonored franchise and 2017's Prey reboot, Deathloop feels like a natural extension of Arkane's immersive sim pedigree. 

But it also differs from those works in that it has multiplayer, wherein a player can take on the role of the game's other protagonist Juliana, and invade someone else's game to kill Colt. 

Deathloop isn't the first Arkane title to have multiplayer, but its newly revealed player numbers come months ahead of the studio's next title, Redfall. The vampire shooter is a co-op game exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem, and definitely symbolizes some sort of change at the studio. 

Redfall hasn't been positioned as a live service game, but it has the air of a game that intends to have more than a base campaign. That particular market has started to slowly buckle under its own weight in recent weeks, which puts Arkane in an interesting position ahead of Redfall's release on May 2.