Sons of the Forest is the sensation of the moment in the video game world. The new survival title from Canadian studio Endnight Games has managed to sell 2 million digital copies through Steam in its first 24 hours. It’s a surprising number for an independent title, which is only available on PC and is not even finished.
When Sons of the Forest was released in early access on February 23, the reception from users was such that Valve’s platform suffered some bugs and crashes in the first few hours after its release. A large part of these problems could be due to the fact that the game did not have a previous reservation campaign and the corresponding possibility of pre-downloading it, something that degenerated into a saturation of the service due to high demand.
Sons of the Forest is a survival horror simulator that can be played alone or with seven other people in cooperative mode. The title puts players in the shoes of survivors who must get out alive from an island infested with cannibals and other creatures worthy of the worst of nightmares. Collecting all kinds of resources, building a base of operations, keeping an eye on inclement weather or fighting against hordes of enemies are the main mechanics of the game.
It is a premise quite similar to the one that The Forest already had, the previous Endnight Games title, which came out in early access in 2014 and ended up being published definitively in 2018. Now, that title sold around 5 million copies. copies throughout its life cycle, a figure that this new installment seems destined to easily surpass.
More figures that show the success of Sons of the Forest: According to data from SteamDB, the game has reached a figure of up to 414,257 concurrent players, that is, Steam users who are playing it at the same time. At the time of writing these lines, it is also the second most viewed game on Twitch, only behind the incombustible Grand Theft Auto V.
The Sons of the Forest phenomenon is largely reminiscent of other PC survival games, such as the Viking-themed title Valheim, which sold 5 million copies in its first month on sale. At that time, the game was also initially released on PC, but ended up also coming out on consoles, something that Endnight Games has suggested could end up happening “in the future”.