Slay the Spire 2 Sells 3 Million Copies in Its First Week of Early Access, Shattering Steam Records for the Roguelike Genre
Mega Crit's sequel hit 574,000 peak concurrent players on Steam and generated an estimated $75 million in its opening week, nearly matching the original's entire lifetime sales.
Overview
Slay the Spire 2, the sequel to Mega Crit Games’ 2019 roguelike deckbuilder, sold 3 million copies within its first week of Early Access on Steam, the developer announced on March 14. The game launched on March 5 at a price of $25 and reached a peak of 574,638 concurrent players, making it the largest roguelike launch in Steam history and one of the platform’s most successful Early Access debuts ever.
The performance is especially striking given the original Slay the Spire accumulated roughly 3.6 million total copies sold on Steam across its entire lifespan. The sequel approached that figure in seven days.
What We Know
Mega Crit confirmed that players have completed more than 250 million runs since launch, averaging roughly 80 runs per person, according to Kotaku. Tracking began slightly after release, meaning the real figure is likely higher. Community manager Demi wrote that the team has “been extremely excited to see so many people’s enthusiasm for what we’ve been working on for the past 5 years.”
The game quickly climbed to the top of Steam’s global Top Sellers chart, overtaking both Marathon and Resident Evil Requiem despite both titles launching in the same window. At $25 per copy, the first-week revenue before Steam’s platform cut is estimated at roughly $75 million.
Slay the Spire 2 introduces four-player cooperative play, a feature absent from the original, alongside new character classes and expanded card mechanics. The sequel’s peak concurrent player count of 574,638 represents a tenfold increase over the original’s all-time peak of 57,025.
The studio also pushed its first major patch during launch week, addressing a widely publicized exploit that allowed players to accumulate over one billion hit points. Character HP is now capped at 999,999,999.
What We Don’t Know
Mega Crit has not published a formal development roadmap. The studio has outlined planned features including a revamped badge and scoring system, friends-only leaderboard filters, a phobia accessibility mode, Steam Workshop support for modding, and alternate versions of Acts 2 and 3. No timeline has been provided for any of these additions.
Console release dates remain unconfirmed. The developer has stated only that console versions will arrive after the Early Access period concludes, which the studio estimates could take one to two years based on their experience with the original game.
While the game currently holds a 94 percent positive rating on Steam, it is unclear how the Early Access period will affect long-term retention. The original Slay the Spire spent over a year in Early Access before its full release in January 2019.
Analysis
The scale of Slay the Spire 2’s debut reflects both the enduring strength of the roguelike deckbuilder genre that the original helped define and the growing commercial viability of Early Access as a launch strategy for established franchises. Mega Crit’s five-year development cycle and the addition of cooperative multiplayer appear to have expanded the game’s addressable audience well beyond the original’s core following.
The 574,000 concurrent player peak places Slay the Spire 2 in rare company on Steam, surpassing the launch numbers of many full-price AAA releases. For a two-person studio that built its reputation on a single title, the result underscores how deeply the original game embedded itself in the PC gaming ecosystem over its seven-year lifespan.