Warhammer 40: Space Marine 2 is yet another game following the growing trend of artificially delaying a game’s release unless you pay extra money. It’s just one more method for companies to extract money from players, charging a higher price for versions of a game that grand “early access.” But while it’s a trend I dislike immensely, it’s hard to deny that it’s effective, especially when the game’s reviews have been so favourable. It might not be hitting the highs of Astro Bot, but a 83 on Opencritic is still solid.
Space Marine 2 has just “launched” for those that paid $99.99/£84.99 (Physical) or $89.99/£79.99 (Digital) for the Gold Edition or any of the even higher tiers. Alongside the included season pass, players have been able don the armour of Titus four days before the game launches for everyone else on September 9.
While we don’t know how well the game is doing on consoles, SteamDB lets us see some tasty PC data and it turns out there’s a lot of people looking to purge the Xeno scum. According to the site, the game managed to hit 134,302 Space Marines playing simultaneously. That’s a minimum of 134,302 who paid extra to honour the Emperor early. With numbers like that, it’s no wonder companies are latching on to the early access pricing model.
A lot of the loyal servants of the Emperor have taken the time to leave reviews, too. For the most part, people seem happy with the game, granting it a “mostly positive” rating on Steam, including this glorious ode to the Emperor: “I’m so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HARD RN!”Thanks Nixidus, you really summed up everything we could possibly have needed to known.
Of course, not everyone is happy. There have been some negative reviews (approximately 20% as I write this) that have mentioned performance woes etc. There have also been some complaints that the game installs Epic Game services by default. These are required for crossplay, but there are those with concerns about Epic’s business dealings. Perhaps crossplay could be made optional?