Phantom Liberty gives Cyberpunk 2077 its highest Steam player count since launch

The newly launched Phantom Liberty expansion has led to Cyberpunk 2077's highest count of Steam players since its original launch in December 2020. SteamDB shows that within the last 24 hours, the expansion has garnered nearly 246,800 concurrent players. 

For comparison, Cyberpunk 2077 first launched to over 1 million Steam players. That number has declined in the years since, but it's gradually gone up again following CD Projekt Red's updates during 2022 specifically, and Netflix's Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime. 

Around this time last year, the game had hit 1 million daily players. And as of late September 2022, its sales across PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 exceeded 20 million copies.

Phantom Liberty is the end and beginning of Cyberpunk 2077

Phantom Liberty was heavily advertised by CD Projekt Red in its pre-release months, as has Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 update. The update brings a full overhaul of the game's systems and is available for all PC and current-gen (read: PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S) players. 

The developer has been open about its faith in Phantom Liberty's potential both as a redemption story and as proof that it's "expanding the scope of our franchises" in the right ways.

This is the first and only expansion for Cyberpunk, which brings it a certain degree of finality before CDPR moves on to the game's sequel, currently known as Project Orion. Ahead of the 2.0 update, the developer suggested starting the game over from scratch would provide a full, true experience rather than reloading an old character. 

Game Developer spoke with Phantom Liberty director Gabriel Amatangelo in June during Summer Game Fest. Amatangelo, who will direct the sequel, talked about using the expansion and the 2.0 update to fulfill the original game's full potential, and it can be read here.