A brand new free-to-play MMORPG is going head-to-head with some of Steam’s most popular online multiplayer titles during its launch week, including Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege and Destiny 2.
Developed by Round 8 Studios, Bless Unleashed is effectively a relaunch of 2019’s short-lived Bless Online. There are various technical improvements (including a move to Unreal Engine 4) and refinements to combat mechanics and progression systems. It seems to be a step in the right direction for the studio, enough to put Bless Unleashed in Steam’s top 10 list as of this morning.
An MMORPG with an improved reception
Bless Unleashed is a free-to-play fantasy MMO where players team up together to fight the evil mage Gideon and his henchmen. While the playerbase is still centered in East Asian markets, the introduction of the game to consoles last year, and NEOWIZ’s marketing campaign ahead of its Aug. 6 PC release, brought many new eyes to the IP.
At the time of writing, Steam Charts reports the game’s concurrent playerbase is at 73,731 players, an all-time high for the game since Friday. The MMO also boasts a small but not insignificant viewership on Twitch.
These numbers are notable. In the same time frame, Destiny 2 hosts 39,698 concurrent players and a 24-hour peak at 52,091 players, according to Steam Charts. Rainbow Six Siege is in tighter competition with Bless Unleashed. Ubisoft’s tactical FPS saw 73,744 players online this morning, with a 75,198 playerbase peak in the past 24 hours, making both games roughly equal in popularity.
Both Destiny 2 and Rainbow Six Siege do, unsurprisingly, have much greater all-time peaks. Launch week stats do not reflect a game’s sustained player base. These stats do not reflect console playerbases of all three games, either.
The Xbox One and PS4 versions of Bless Unleashed were published by Bandai Namco in 2020. So far, only the Xbox version has received enough reviews to garner a score on review-aggregator site Metacritic, where it has received average reviews from critics and users alike.
