The battle royale genre is seemingly stuffed to the brim, with major titles like Call of Duty: Warzone and Apex Legends requiring players to devote a lot of time if they hope to keep up while content continually releases. Even so, Chinese developer 24 Entertainment is putting its hat in the ring with Naraka: Bladepoint, a title centered around close-quarters, melee combat between 60 players. An open beta for Naraka: Bladepoint began April 23, and thus far it has reportedly been a hit on Steam.
It's not uncommon for multiplayer games to host a number of alpha and beta tests prior to launch, that way developers can begin to iron out any kinks in the gameplay or design elements before providing players with a full experience. Just this week, Resident Evil RE:Verse hosted a beta test on PC and consoles leading up to its planned release on May 7.
This weekend's Naraka: Bladepoint "FORERUNNER" beta was detailed on April 16, with different regions getting access to the game between different dates and times. The official Twitter account for game reported that day 1 for the beta, between 11:00 a.m. PDT on April 23 and 11:00 a.m. PDT on April 24, saw it peak at 120,056 concurrent players. As a result the game was ranked sixth overall on a list of most-played games on Steam behind Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, PUBG, Apex Legends, and Grand Theft Auto 5.
As of this writing Naraka: Bladepoint no longer appears on the most-played games list as reported by Steam Database. However, the beta tops Steam Database's trending games list based on numbers gathered over the last seven days, putting it well ahead of the just-released Nier Replicant and a community-made Portal 2 mod called Portal Reloaded.
Compared to games like Warzone and Fortnite, these numbers aren't Earth-shattering by any means. However, given this upcoming battle royale is only on PC and has had more limited exposure since Naraka: Bladepoint debuted at The Game Awards 2019, the fact its beta garnered so much attention on just one day is impressive.
Naraka: Bladepoint's FORERUNNER beta will be available until 11:00 a.m. PDT on April 26, so those who are interested have the rest of the weekend to check out this unique take on battle royale combat. Whether it retains peoples' attentions during the rest of that time remains to be seen, but this early success is reminiscent of the surge People Can Fly's Outriders received from its demo in February, which bodes well for the Chinese developer and publisher NetEase.
Naraka: Bladepoint is planned for a summer 2021 release on PC.
Source: Steam Database