WW2 grand strategy game Hearts of Iron IV has just received a new expansion – No Step Back – which brings about a lot of changes that so far seem to elevate the game to new heights. In one respect this is proving literal, because the strategy game has just set a new concurrent player record, according to SteamDB.
Hearts of Iron IV has achieved a new all-time high of 68,019 concurrent players in the period since its launch this week. The previous record was set in February 2019 with 46,806 and, while there have been other spikes since then which have come close, only last night’s release firmly managed to break the record. Even SteamDB’s active figure for concurrent players at the time of writing is better than the 2019 record at 56,988.
While SteamDB doesn’t tell us the whole picture – it doesn’t cover other platforms, for example – even taking this specific slice of information the war game seems to be doing very well right now. It’s already been identified as Paradox’s most popular strategy game, and during the recent Q3 earning calls CEO Fredrik Wester specifically mentioned how Hearts of Iron IV player numbers had been growing since its launch five years ago.
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