Supergiant's Hades 2 has had such a big Early Access launch that it's ended up scaring off Evil Empire and Ubisoft's The Rogue Prince of Persia.
Evil Empire's pushed back the Early Access launch of its game (which is also a roguelike) from Tuesday, May 14 to another date. The team noted the change is specifically because of Hades 2.
"Everyone and their mum is playing that game (including our entire team...and their mums)," it wrote. "We will still be releasing in May, and will be back with a precise date on Monday, May 13."
Games get delayed to avoid clashing with other titles often. But it's not every day a specific game is explicitly listed: when Don't Nod delayed Banishers last year, for example, the studio attributed it to the deluge of fall 2023 games rather than one exact title.
As Evil Empire notes, "it's not every day a game in the same genre as you...will release into Early Access a week before you do the same. We're not prideful enough to ignore the implications of that."
Evil Empire has extensive roguelike experience, given co-developed Dead Cells for nearly a decade. But this delay may also speak to the uncertainty around Prince of Persia as a franchise and the vagueness the sales of January's Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
At launch, Hades 2 had over 103,000 concurrent players. While that peak hasn't been eclipsed yet, numbers have been fairly stable in the days since launch.
So big was the roguelike sequel's launch in Early Access that the original Hades has now hit a new peak of 46,144 players, eclipsing its original peak of 36,043 players from years prior.
2024 has had plenty of big indie games hit, and the month of May has continued the trend so far.
On May 9, developers sunset visitor and Billy Basso released their respective titles, 1000xResist and Animal Well, which both opened to critical acclaim.
Likewise, Double Dagger's Little Kitty, Big City and SFB's Crow Country both released on May 9 to solid praise. At time of writing, none of the games have released any sales numbers, but they each appear to be carving out their own niches online.
The month of April ended with the successful launch of Aggro Crab's Another Crab's Treasure. Within half a week, it sold over 100,000 copies.
And who could forget Balatro, which managed to draw up 500,000 copies in 10 days back in February.
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