‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Player Count Rockets After Netflix Series Debuts

While this probably won’t come as a huge surprise - we’ve seen it with The Witcher before, and no doubt Assassin’s Creed will get a healthy games-sales boost when its TV adaptation lands - CD Project Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 has seen its player numbers rise sharply in the wake of Netflix’s anime adaptation, Edgerunners, debuting on September 13.

The Studio Trigger-produced show - which runs to 10 episodes and is based on the 2020-released open-world game set in Night City - has been well received by critics, with plenty of praise offered for its striking visuals and animation. If you’re yet to sink your own eyeballs into it, check the official Edgerunners trailer below - but beware, it’s not exactly safe for work.

As comicbook.com reports, the game’s concurrent players on Steam were sitting at around 15,000 a week ago. But in the wake of Edgerunners’ release, that’s gone up to a peak of over 85,000 in the last 24 hours (at the time of writing, of course). As of just half an hour ago (again, at the time of writing), some 78,000 people were playing the game, just on Steam (says Steam Charts). That’s quite the uptick from where it was seven days ago. And you have to assume that there's plenty of fresh playthroughs going on right now on console platforms, too.

Whether those are returning players or all-new visitors to Night City, we don’t know. What we do is that Cyberpunk 2077 is receiving story DLC in 2023. Phantom Liberty is the expansion’s name and will see Keanu Reeves returning to the (playable) role of Johnny Silverhand. “It’s awesome to be back, playing the role of Johnny,” the actor said in a recent promo video - and yes, yes it is awesome. Looking forward to that when it drops next year.

At the time of writing (there I go with those words again), Edgerunners hasn’t been commissioned for a second season by Netflix - high critical ratings aren’t enough for the service to press the big green button on more of the good stuff, as it’s all about those viewership stats (especially in the first two weeks of a show’s release). Which is to say: if you loved Edgerunners and want more of it, tell your pals and get them to stream it, even if they’re not actually watching it. All those plays, they add up.