Sunbreak expansion nearly doubles Monster Hunter Rise's Steam player record

Monster Hunter Rise's Sunbreak expansion.

(Image credit: Capcom)

Monster Hunter Rise is probably 2022's sleeper title on PC. It racked up pretty big numbers, but releasing in mid-January and sharing its early-year release window with Elden Ring in February did it no favors. Well, it's asleep no more, as the release of the Sunbreak expansion has led Capcom's latest monster hunting title to nearly double its record concurrent player count on Steam, by SteamDB's reckoning.

Peaking at about 134,000 concurrents a few days after launch in January, Monster Hunter Rise has now, uh, risen to a high of 231,360 this weekend as Sunbreak launches. On their respective launch days, Rise had a mere 90,000, while Rise had more than 194,000 on Sunbreak's launch day.

https://steamdb.info/app/1446780/graphs/ — (Image credit: SteamDB)

Sunbreak brings a whole boatload of new monsters to Rise, including one which our Wes Fenlon found to be a profound and targeted personal affront.

Rich Stanton quite liked Rise on release, and his Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak review continues our pretty positive sentiments on the game. "Monster Hunter Rise is as good as this series has ever been, and Sunbreak is much more of the same," he said, noting that "It's also a lot tougher, but that feels like the right call."

A call which I suspect very much resembles the hooting and hollering of a vast, angry ape.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.