Slay the Spire 2 early access crashed Steam and set a roguelike record

Slay the Spire 2 launched in early access on Windows PC on Thursday and briefly brought parts of Steam offline. The game’s release ranks among the biggest launches of 2026.

Shortly after its March 5 release, the launch caused about half an hour of outages on Steam. SteamDB shows the game peaked at 430,456 concurrent players at around 9 a.m. EDT and sat near 300,000 concurrents as of this writing.

That peak more than triples the previous roguelike record set less than a month ago by Mewgenics, which hit 115,428 players on Feb. 15. Mewgenics had itself surpassed Hades 2, which reached 112,947 concurrent players in September 2025.

All three record-setters launched amid strong anticipation, and their numbers point to renewed interest in roguelikes. Slay the Spire 2 arrives seven years after its predecessor and is currently in early access on a single major platform — if it’s this large now, the full launch could be substantially bigger.

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