Back 4 Blood beta beats Warframe and TF2’s player counts in its first few days

The Back 4 Blood beta kicked off earlier this week, with players flocking to play the eagerly-anticipated follow-up to Valve’s classic Left 4 Dead games – with still no news about Left 4 Dead 3, that’s understandable. In fact, Back 4 Blood has been so successful – despite still only being a closed beta – it nearly hit 100K concurrent players in its first couple of days.

As tracked by SteamDB, yesterday the Back 4 Blood beta hit a concurrent player count peak of over 98K players, just shy of the 100K player count that would’ve looked fantastic in a headline but oh well. It’s still got a chance to get there too, since the Back 4 Blood closed beta transforms into the full open beta this Thursday, August 12.

At the same time as Back 4 Blood was hitting 98K, it was seeing off competition from such Steam stalwarts as Team Fortress 2 – which only managed a peak in the last week of 92K, and that was before the Back 4 Blood beta even released.

The beta also saw off the likes of Warframe, Ark: Survival Evolved, and Rainbow Six: Siege, making it the eighth most popular game on Steam for a time – coming in just below the likes of Rust, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Apex Legends.

At the time of writing, player counts have dipped a little to bring it in at a still-respectable 65K concurrent players, which may well increase later on today. Bear in mind again that this is only a closed invite-only beta, and the real open beta starts later this week – with the full Back 4 Blood game launching in October – so it’s impressive nonetheless, showcasing a real desire for a proper successor to Left 4 Dead, despite Back 4 Blood’s lack of a similar Versus Campaign mode.