Split Fiction, the newest co-op game from writer-director Josef Fares and his Hazelight Studios, released on March 6 and had a gigantic opening weekend.
The game reached a peak of 259,003 concurrent players on Steam on Sunday, March 9. That makes it the No. 2 game of all time published by EA in terms of Steam concurrents, surpassed only by the free-to-play battle royale game Apex Legends. These data points come from SteamDB and were first spotted by Twisted Voxel.
The top five EA games on Steam ranked by peak concurrent players are:
- Apex Legends – 624,473
- Split Fiction – 259,003
- Battlefield V – 116,104
- EA Sports FIFA 23 – 110,878
- EA Sports FC 25 – 110,026
It also bears mentioning that EA avoided Steam for a while, choosing to instead publish its games on its own PC platform. The company brought its games back to Steam in 2019.
Hazelight’s last release, It Takes Two, reached a peak of 71,039, so Split Fiction is many factors bigger than that game. Not only is Split Fiction extremely popular, but it’s getting rave reviews. Here at GameSpot, our Split Fiction review scored it a 10/10. On GameSpot sister site Metacritic, Split Fiction (91) is EA’s first game to have an aggregate rating of 90 or above in the past decade. 2012’s Mass Effect 3 was the last game to rank 90 or higher.
Not everyone who is playing Split Fiction necessarily bought a copy of the game. That’s because the game utilizes a Friend’s Pass system whereby only one person has to buy a copy. Also of note is that Split Fiction is also available on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, so the Steam numbers only account for a percentage of the game’s total reach and popularity.
Sony and Microsoft do not share concurrent player numbers, however, and as of yet, neither EA nor Hazelight have released any official player or sales numbers for Split Fiction.
The game has massive shoes to fill, as It Takes Two sold a whopping 23 million copies. Split Fiction’s development budget was “almost double” that of It Takes Two, according to Fares.
After Fares made the critically acclaimed Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons with Starbreeze, he branched out and founded his own studio, Hazelight. The company is best known for co-op-only games, and has released three games so far: A Way Out, It Takes Two, and Split Fiction. All three have been published by EA under its EA Original label. Hazelight remains an independent studio.
Fares has been outspoken regarding his dislike of microtransactions and live-service elements, which are two of the main pillars of EA’s business. Hazelight has only just released Split Fiction, so there is no word yet on what the company might make next or if it will stay with EA.
Beyond games, Hazelight has partnered with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for an It Takes Two movie for Prime Video.