Mecha Break, the mecha-driven battler from Amazing Seasun Games, had a historic weekend. Its newest round of open beta play went live on February 23, and saw player counts reach high enough that it even momentarily overcame the likes of Marvel Rivals.
As spotted by PCGamesN, the player count on Steam for the new Mecha Break Demo launched up and over NetEase's Marvel hero shooter, reaching over 317,000 concurrent players on Steam. As of this writing, the demo has reached an all-time peak of 317,522 on Valve's platform (per SteamDB), with a 24-hour peak of 303,991.
Concurrents are fickle though, as Marvel Rivals quickly took back its spot, hitting a 344,535 player-count peak in the last 24 hours (via SteamDB). Still, making Marvel Rivals sweat is a pretty big achievement for an open beta.
It wasn't all sunshine, though. The huge influx of pilots into Mecha Break's hangars apparently caused distress on the servers, resulting in some disconnects and other issues.
Amazing Seasun has already responded to Mecha Break players frustrated with the server issues, promising three batches of "Ultimate Maintenance Box" gifts delivered through in-game mail. Those server issues seem like they could be a contributing factor to the demo's current 'Mostly Negative' rating on Steam, where users also cite the anti-cheat measures and monetization concerns.
Either way, it looks like Mecha Break is one to watch moving forward. Our own hands-on with Mecha Break back in August had similar takeaways, contrasting compelling mecha combat with concerns over out-of-game structures. We'll see if Mecha Break can keep up momentum, and appease naysayers in the process, on its way towards a launch sometime this year.
Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.
