How Terraria Shot from 25K to 480K Concurrent Players in 9 Years
What’s behind the indie game’s astronomical success?
If you haven’t heard of Terraria, I wouldn’t blame you. It’s a solid 2D action-adventure sandbox game, commonly compared to Minecraft. While the two share many elements of procedural world exploration and crafting, Terraria has a stronger emphasis on RPG mechanics, gear, and combat.
Terraria originally launched on PC via Steam over 9 years ago. Since then, the game has received numerous updates, including its latest (in May) titled “Journey’s End.”
Looking at the numbers on Steam Charts, Terraria has averaged 25,000 concurrent players over the past year, but in May this year it spiked to a staggering 486,918 at its peak. That concurrent player record is Steam’s fourth highest ever, trending higher than AAA juggernauts Grand Theft Auto V and Fallout 4.
Why did this happen? These seem like insane numbers for such an old, indie title pushing out an update, but when you put the pieces together, it makes a lot more sense.
Terraria has seen dozens of updates and hot-fixes since its original release back in May 2011. The 1.2 update added The Crimson, some additional biomes, bosses, and the jungle temple for players to explore. 1.3 arrived in 2015 and added Lunar Events, Martians, caves, expert mode, achievements, and everyone’s favorite weapon to use: Yoyos. The most recent Journey’s End update added new Journey and Master modes, which offer new and tougher ways to play the game; the graveyard, an oasis, golf (its awesome), pylons, and bosses.
One of the core reasons Minecraft is still so popular today, is due to its replayability. With its own sandbox with procedural world generation, it makes sense that Terraria would have the same. Terraria, like Minecraft, now features some great mod support, and does a great job with its different game modes (Journey, Hardcore, Expert and Master Mode) so you’ll always have something new to do or see in the game.
To be honest, I’m not hugely into these types of games, but I’ve returned to this one multiple times (2012, 2015, 2020) to experience the new tweaks and additions. This is a game that I previously played solo, but this year got the chance to play with a friend on our own server. This experience alone added a new depth to Terraria that I hadn’t yet experienced.
In total I’ve racked up 60 hours playing this game, but I am not a hardcore player by any means. I’ve probably spent 20 of those 60 hours just building and collecting different things. This game absolutely nails the feeling of progression, with new weapons and items being available to craft and collect constantly. Most of the boss battles are fun enough that you want to run them several times to collect everything. There are around 4,500 different items in the game, so think how long would it take you if all you wanted to do was collect everything.
The value you also get with Terraria is impressive. The game is currently available on Steam for $10.99 CAD / $9.99 USD, and is frequently included in different Steam sales. At one point you were able to pick up the game for $1.99 USD, which is mind boggling when you think about the hours of enjoyment it can provide. We’re talking 50–100+ hours of enjoyment in a video game, for the price of a candy bar.
The world state is another reason I believe this game is so hot right now. Prior to the global pandemic we saw tons of anticipated games get their release dates pushed back. Games like Cyberpunk 2077, The Last of Us 2, and Dying Light 2 are just a few of the big titles that got pushed back. Because of this, there hasn’t been a lot of new releases for people to play, many people, like myself, have taken this time to play through our backlogs. Taking the fact that we’re living in a time where many people are quarantined and/or working from home, it makes sense that the Journey’s End update for Terraria made such a big splash along with the rest of what the game has to offer.
Terraria developer Re-Logic said in May last year that the game had sold over 27 million copies. Hopefully, this success shows that great games that prioritize content over micro-transactions can prevail.
