Aion 2 has reached nearly 400,000 concurrent players on Steam following its global launch, giving NC’s new MMORPG one of the strongest PC launches of the year. SteamDB data cited by multiple outlets recorded a peak of 397,905 concurrent Steam users on October 5, while NC said total concurrency exceeded 400,000 once players using its PURPLE platform were included. The milestone arrived immediately after the game moved out of its paid early-access period and opened globally as a free-to-play release.
The launch represents a significant jump from the numbers recorded during early access. Aion 2 entered advance access on September 30 for players who bought a Founder’s Pack, reaching a Steam peak of roughly 171,530 players during that period. The post-launch peak therefore increased by more than 226,000 players, or around 2.3 times the early-access high, once the wider player base gained access on October 5.
Aion 2 launched globally at 10 PM KST on October 5 across Steam and NC’s PURPLE launcher, expanding beyond its earlier Asian availability into markets including North America, South America, Europe and Japan. Steam lists the game as free-to-play, while NC also offers optional paid membership and additional purchases. The PC version supports eight interface and subtitle languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Korean.
The player count is especially notable when compared with several other recent Steam launches. Aniimo passed 100,000 concurrent Steam players at launch, while The Witcher 3 Remastered climbed above 137,000 players following its late-September release. Aion 2’s nearly 398,000-player Steam peak places it comfortably above those launches and establishes an unusually large opening audience for a new MMORPG.
NC had already seen signs of strong demand before the free-to-play launch. The company said Steam wishlists surpassed 1.3 million ahead of release, while Aion 2 also reached the top of Steam’s global Top Sellers chart by revenue when Founder’s Pack early access began on September 30. That combination of high wishlist interest, paid early-access demand and the subsequent free-to-play surge suggests the launch-day peak was not driven by a single short promotional spike.
Early user reception on Steam has also been more positive than mixed. Steam currently lists Aion 2 with a Mostly Positive rating, with roughly 70% of more than 4,500 English-language user reviews marked positive at the time of writing. That is a meaningful distinction from other high-concurrency launches where large player numbers have arrived alongside much weaker user sentiment.
Built in Unreal Engine 5, Aion 2 is positioned as a direct successor to NC’s long-running Aion MMORPG. Its Steam description emphasizes large-scale aerial combat, faction warfare and a world the developer says is 36 times larger than that of the original game. Flight is integrated directly into combat and exploration rather than being treated only as a traversal system, making vertical movement one of the game’s central design features.
The Steam figure does not represent Aion 2’s complete player population because users on PURPLE are excluded from Steam tracking. NC has said combined concurrency across the two PC platforms crossed 400,000, although it has not disclosed a detailed split beyond the public Steam peak. That means the 397,905 figure remains the clearest independently measurable benchmark for the scale of the launch.
Whether Aion 2 can sustain anything close to its opening numbers will be the more important test over the coming weeks. MMORPG launches often produce sharp initial peaks before populations settle, particularly when a game transitions from paid early access to a free-to-play global release. For now, however, nearly 400,000 simultaneous Steam players gives Aion 2 an exceptionally strong starting point and immediately establishes it as one of 2026’s largest PC MMO launches.
