Path of Exile 2 Has Lost a Huge Number of Players on Steam and Is Being Outperformed by the First Game

After a highly successful launch, Path of Exile 2 is now facing a period of deep decline, with a significant drop in players on Steam, making it surpassed by the first installment, which currently has six times more concurrent players.

It’s worth remembering that Path of Exile 2 is still in early access, so it isn’t in its final version yet and still has time to evolve and recover. However, the recent numbers look quite harsh.

A Sharp Decline After a Record-Breaking Start

Following its early access launch, which once reached a record 578,569 concurrent players on Steam about a year ago, the game has since experienced a sharp drop in popularity, recently peaking at around 20,000 concurrent users.

Of course, the number of concurrent players on Steam (according to SteamDB data) isn’t always a perfect indicator of a game’s overall health — especially for one still in early access. Still, for a title built so heavily around its community, it remains an important metric.

Beyond the fact that Path of Exile 2 has lost more than 95% of its initial player base, what’s striking is that the first game, Path of Exile, continues to perform strongly, regularly reaching peaks of over 110,000 players.

This shows that the core formula still works, but it’s clear that players haven’t embraced some of the changes made in the sequel, preferring to return en masse to the original — released an impressive 12 years ago.

Both games rely heavily on new content and long-term support, so everything depends on the pace and quality of future updates. The first Path of Exile recently received the Keeper of the Flame update, which successfully revitalized online activity, while Path of Exile 2 got the major The Third Edict update last summer, which was initially well received by players.

However, the slow development pace and extended early access phase seem to be hurting the sequel, as players appear to be leaving it behind in favor of the older, more stable original.