The recently-released free-to-play Loadout, a third-person shooter with similarities to Team Fortress 2 and a deep weapon-crafting system, has reportedly seen nearly unprecedented success: two million users have signed up in the two weeks since its release, developer Edge of Reality has announced.
Free-to-play games are increasingly popular in the industry, with more and more titles switching to or starting with the model. It's a new way to get gamers playing your game without charging up front, and has largely proven successful, hence the trend.
Loadout uses this model, offering in-game purchases for mostly aesthetic items, but charging nothing to download or play the game. Through Steam, gamers have logged over nine million hours crafting weapons and blowing one another up in various game modes.
Edge of Reality CEO Rob Cohen said, "Very few Steam titles have reached the peak concurrent users we achieved upon release. We're committed to delivering an excellent game to our community, and we continue to work hard to ensure that our servers provide all our players with the same fluid, responsive, and enjoyable experience across the board."
The game was overloaded at launch with gamers trying to play, which caused issues for a while until the developers improved the infrastructure. "The incredible surge of interest at launch shattered all our expectations, and it unfortunately just became too much for our servers to handle in the beginning," Cohen stated.
Loadout features a robust weapon creation system, where you can switch in and out gun types and various components of a weapon to create your own, supposedly totaling 44 billion possible configurations. The game's humorous style and violent combat, with gore and explosions from the different elemental and ammo types filling the battlefield, have helped the game stand out from the crowd.