Cyberpunk 2077, the action role-playing game from CD Projekt RED, is seeing a resurgence in players this past weekend, with a peak of 85,555 concurrent players on Steam. The game typically averages around 10,000 to 20,000 concurrents since its all-time high of over 1 million at launch.
Why are people playing Cyberpunk 2077 again? The increase in players can be attributed primarily to the launch of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners on Netflix. The web anime, produced by Studio Trigger under the supervision of CD Projekt, currently has one of the best audience scores of any Netflix show in history.
Edgerunners currently sits at a 97% average audience score on Rotten Tomatoes with hundreds of reviews. The visually-stunning show has been praised for its characters, animation, and, of course, the incredible world created by Mike Pondsmith.
Studio Trigger, founded by Hiroyuki Imaishi and Masahiko Ōtsuka in Tokyo, Japan, in 2011, is well-known for animes like Promare, Kill la Kill, Little Witch Academia, and BNA: Brand New Animal. They truly exceeded expectations on Edgerunners, and the result is an excellent extension of the game which inspired it.
Paweł Sasko, quest director of Cyberpunk 2077, took to Twitter to show his thanks to the new and returning players:
“Thank you so much chooms for this second chance.”
To align with the series release, Cyberpunk 2077 released update 1.6, appropriately titled the Edgerunners Update. The update primarily focused on gameplay improvements (an ongoing task for CDPR) and new content inspired by Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
From the patch notes, CD Projekt notes that they have “Added some secrets related to the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime series to be discovered in Night City, including new equipment and new Photo Mode features.”
To sustain this growth, we anticipate CD Projekt will continue adding new content from the show, giving players new things to do and discover in Night City in future updates. We already know the team is hard at work revamping the behavior of NCPD, an admittedly poorly functioning part of the game that was briefly touched upon in a recent episode of Night City Wire.
Moreover, Cyberpunk fans have Phantom Liberty to look forward to in 2023, the first expansion for Cyberpunk 2077.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is available to watch on Netflix. Cyberpunk 2077 is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
