The WW2 grand strategy game Hearts of Iron IV has just received a new expansion-No Step Back-it has brought many changes, and it seems to have taken the game to a new level so far. According to SteamDB, on the one hand, this proved to be literal because the strategy game just set a new record of concurrent players.
Since its launch this week, Hearts of Iron IV has reached a record high of 68,019 concurrent players. The previous record was set in February 2019 with 46,806 times. Although there have been other peaks coming to an end since then, only the release last night did it firmly break the record. Even SteamDB's number of active concurrent players at the time of writing is better than the 2019 record of 56,988.
Although SteamDB doesn't tell us the whole picture-for example, it doesn't cover other platforms-but even with this particular piece of information, the war game now seems to be doing well. It has been identified as Paradox’s most popular strategy game. In the recent third-quarter earnings call, CEO Fredrik Wester specifically mentioned that the number of Hearts of Iron IV players has been growing since its launch five years ago.
It seems that the No Step Back extension has also done a good job in sales:
We are very close to breaking the internal stellaris record in NSB sales. @Arheo_ promised to shave his head if this happens, so come and help!
— Dan Lind (@podcat_paradox) November 23, 2021
Unfortunately, we were unable to get any further clarification on the specifics of this tweet from Paradox. This expansion pack is the last expansion pack completed by former game director Dan'Podcat' Lind, who is working on a new project. We recently discussed with Lind about his time as game director and the first five years of HOI4. He is replaced by Peter'Arheo' Nicholson, the former game director of Imperator: Rome.
Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back is now available on PC through Steam and Paradox stores.
Joe Robinson Partial Editor-Strategy
As a strategy game enthusiast of PCGamesN, Joe was the editor of Wargamer.com and wrote for Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Like Heart of Steel 4, Kerbal Space Program and Halo.