Slay the Spire 2 dev Mega Crit is "totally blown away" by its half-million player peak, but it's another indie triumph

Slay the Spire 2 developer Mega Crit is “totally blown away” by the immediate and colossal response to its long-awaited sequel, but it’s exactly what the team deserves. If there’s a ‘second coming’ for roguelike deckbuilders, StS 2 is it. The original is foundational to the genre, often imitated but never surpassed, and it’s still elevated as one of the best examples of the form eight years on from its early access launch. Seeing Slay the Spire 2 break the half-million concurrent player count on Steam is another massive win for indie games in 2026 after the success of Mewgenics, and it’s just the start.

“Our team is totally blown away by the amount of people who have been playing and sharing their love for the game we’ve been working on for the past half decade,” Mega Crit writes. “We’re excited to continue to make Slay the Spire 2 the best that it can be! Also obligatory joke: we’ll getcha one day, Silksong.” At the current trend, there’s every chance that ‘joke’ could become a reality – Slay the Spire 2’s current all-time high of 526,793 active users is within breathing room of Silksong’s 587,150 record.

Perhaps Mega Crit is just slyly looking to tempt fate for a second time. On its launch day of Thursday March 5, when numbers were slowly starting to gain momentum despite Steam buckling under the combined new releases of Slay the Spire 2, Marathon, and Poker Night at the Inventory, the developer made a light-hearted joke. “Congratulations to the Marathon team on their launch,” Mega Crit posted, “Don’t let small indie passion projects like this pass you by just because Slay the Spire 2 is out.”

By the weekend, Slay the Spire 2’s numbers had exploded, while Marathon sits at a respectable but much lower 88,337 player peak. Flagging the joke post on his personal account, Mega Crit co-founder Casey Yano admitted, “This seems a bit meaner than it was intended… To be fair I didn’t think we’d actually pass Marathon in concurrent users.”

Looking at the first Slay the Spire’s lifetime high of 57,025, which was only reached three months ago, you can perhaps understand why Mega Crit was caught off-guard. But taken in the wider context, this was a gradual growth over years. Slay the Spire 2 has been a bullet point in the 2026 calendar: the grand successor to a deckbuilder so impactful that it remains the go-to touchstone for talking about the genre, with only Balatro reaching a similar level of cultural importance.

If you need any further indication of just how strong the love for Slay the Spire has grown, consider that the first game still has a 36,207 peak in the last 24 hours despite the fact that the sequel is available. If you’re not quite ready to drop your money on the new entry yet, the original remains as good as ever – and at the time of writing it has almost the same number of players as Marathon does.

I’ve been playing Slay the Spire 2, despite my initial hesitation as I wondered if I should wait for its early access journey to play out before diving in. I can already recommend it. It’s one of those strange sequels that at first glance feels more like a polish update for its predecessor, only to gradually unfurl its true nature before you.

Improved artwork and animations give way to reconsidered run structure and fresh mechanics. Mega Crit shows the confidence to keep around characters, cards, and trinkets that are established and well-balanced, while introducing bold new additions. There are some questionable balance decisions, sure, but that’s why we’re here in early access. From top to bottom this is an upgraded version of one of the most beloved indies on PC.

Then there’s the co-op, which feels far more natural than I thought it would. I can’t yet tell if it’s easier, because of the fallback of a second person to cover for your weaknesses, or harder, because I have enough trouble trying to coordinate my own strategy when playing alone, but it’s certainly a good time. Watch the Steam charts closely, because no matter how much Mega Crit plays it off, Hollow Knight Silksong’s record is very much in sight.