Rebellion's been around for a long time, and it's put out a lot of videogames—some of them pretty good! But its newest release, Atomfall, may surpass them all: Rebellion says Atomfall has now surpassed 1.5 million players since its March 27 release, and now stands as the "most successful launch in the company’s 32-year history."
"We are delighted that so many players are enjoying Atomfall," Rebellion co-founder and CEO Jason Kingsley said.
"To have surpassed the one million players in such a short space of time speaks volumes for the creativity and dedication of the entire team here at Rebellion. Our size and stability mean that we can take risks to create something as different as Atomfall. Happily, that risk is paying off."
(Kingsley's statement came when Atomfall surpassed a million players, but Rebellion said earlier today that it's now moved even higher.)
The reference to Rebellion's "size and stability" echoes comments Kingsley made in a March interview with PC Gamer, in which he attributed the studio's avoidance of layoffs amidst the ongoing chaos of the game industry to maintaining controls of its games' scale and cost.
"I prefer a small, really good game than a really big kind of game that isn't focused down on what's important for the player," Kingsley said at the time. "We're just very professional with controlling scope and costs. Sometimes we say, guys, this game's too big."
I've been playing Atomfall for a while now and enjoying it quite a bit, and I think it reflects that attitude toward development: While it obviously takes cues from games like Fallout and Stalker, it's notably more compact and focused. Not to its detriment (so far at least, I'm not nearly deep enough into it to make any sort of meaningful judgment), it just is what it is: A competent, fun, occasionally goofy shooter that never even pretends to engage with the whole "See that mountain? You can climb it" thing.
Concurrent player numbers on Steam have been okay but not great, peaking out at a little over 6,000 concurrents during Atomfall's first weekend of release. The 1.5 million player count is no doubt driven largely by Atomfall's presence on Game Pass, where everyone can give it a spin for no more cost than what they're paying for their subscription anyway.
But even though the actual number of copies sold isn't quite so sky-high, Kingsley seems happy: "We hope that players continue to enjoy exploring the world of Atomfall and are looking forward to future content for the game."
Atomfall does in fact have at least one story expansion planned called Wicked Isle that will feature a new location, enemies, characters, weapons, items, and gameplay features. A release date for that hasn't been set.
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