KEY POINTS

  • "7 Days to Die's" player count rose sharply upon the release of its latest update Monday
  • The game's player count effectively doubled within the span of 24 hours
  • The Alpha 20 is currently in its experimental stage

The player count for “7 Days to Die” within 24 hours reached a new peak shortly after the Monday release of the latest Alpha 20 update, which brings many highly-anticipated features to the game.

The 8-year-old zombie survival sandbox game was met with a big wave of players upon the launch of Alpha 20, with concurrent player count doubling and reaching 41,665 in less than a day, according to Steam Charts. This is the second-highest peak player count the game has ever seen after it saw 46,402 online players within a 24-hour period back in April.

Reaching over 40,000 players is an impressive feat for a game that has been in the Alpha stage for nearly a decade. The excitement over the Alpha 20 update has resulted in a resurgence of old players who have been waiting for a major game update since the release of Alpha 19 earlier this year.

This spike in players has put “7 Days to Die” up to par with “ARK Survival Evolved’s” current monthly player average. As of writing, the former has roughly 38,000 active players, while the latter has 40,000.

However, time will tell if “7 Days to Die” will be able to maintain this number of players over the course of the next month, especially considering how the usual average monthly player count rests at around 18,000.

A horde of zombies in a ruined city in 7 Days To Die
A horde of zombies in a ruined city in 7 Days To Die. The Fun Pimps

The Alpha 20 update was able to further modernize the game to a certain extent. A slew of gameplay changes and new features were introduced to “7 Days to Die” in the update, including HD models, improved graphics, new weapons and improved random world generation that could create realistic-looking towns and cities.

Despite being listed as an Alpha, “7 Days to Die” boasts a surprising level of polish. Its stable game versions have very few bugs that affect gameplay. The game has changed drastically throughout the years, and it has remained at the top of Steam’s survival games catalog together with other venerable titles like “Rust” and “ARK Survival Evolved.”

Currently, the Alpha 20 version of the game is in the experimental stages. Players will need to opt in to this latest test build via Steam in order to experience all of the new additions and updates.

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