Easy Red 2, a World War II first-person shooter released in 2020, has recently experienced a massive surge in its Steam player count, shattering all previous records for the game.
The game has largely flown under the radar compared to bigger titles in its genre like Hell Let Loose and Battlefield, but now it reached an impressive 12,026 concurrent players on Friday, March 28. This jump represents nearly 4x of its previous peak of 3,300 players recorded just a week earlier.
SteamDB data shows this recent spike is roughly 20x higher than the game’s numbers from June 2024, when it averaged only about 680 concurrent users. Before this explosion in popularity, Easy Red 2 typically hovered around 100-200 active players at any given time.
So what’s behind this sudden success? The game’s latest “Shanghai-Nanking” DLC has definitely sparked fresh interest. Released on Friday, it added a fresh chapter set during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, focusing on the pivotal battles in China.
Plus, the PlayStation 4 and PS5 versions launched on the same day created a lot of buzz.
The price point doesn’t hurt either – The base game itself at just $8.99 / £7.99, it’s a fraction of what you’d pay for most FPS titles today.
Looking at player feedback, Easy Red 2 has always been well-received by those who discovered it. More than 6,000 Steam reviews give it a 90% positive rating – suggesting this game has always had quality gameplay, even if it wasn’t widely known.
The game offers both single-player and multiplayer experiences where you pick a class, join a squad, and battle for control of territory across open maps – similar to Hell Let Loose or Battlefield’s Conquest mode. What makes it unique is the death mechanic: when killed, you take control of one of your CPU squadmates to continue fighting.
Players familiar with the title praise its realistic bullet physics and fully destructible environments. The vehicle combat is another highlight, with tanks and planes that support multiple players in different roles.
Easy Red 2’s journey shows how smaller games can suddenly find their audience years after release. The mix of positive reviews, affordable pricing, and new content seems to have created the perfect conditions for this previously overlooked shooter to finally get its moment.
The game is available on Steam, Xbox, and Switch versions launched in 2022, and now PlayStation 4 and 5 versions.
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