Despite releasing back in 2019, Need for Speed Heat has seen a huge player spike on Steam, beating its all-time peak. Thanks to a massive discount and the imminent reveal of Need for Speed 2022, Need for Speed Heat is more popular than ever.
Need for Speed Heat sees 5,500 per cent player spike on Steam
Need for Speed Heat’s Steam player count peaked from an average of 1,500-2,500 per day in recent months to 86,196 last Sunday according to SteamDB - – a remarkable 5,500 per cent rise according to TheGamer.
That was enough players to beat its previous all-time peak player record of 13,440 players in September 2021.
At the time of writing, Need for Speed Heat has 78,614 active players according to SteamDB and is the ninth best-selling Steam game. To put this into perspective, NFS Heat is more popular than Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 right now in the Steam sales charts.
This is especially impressive when you consider that NFS Heat is three years old and arrived on Steam a few months after the initial PC release on EA Origin.
Need for Speed 2022 reveal imminent
Why has NFS Heat seen such a significant player spike on Steam? There are several reasons.
Firstly, NFS Heat is currently free to play on Steam as part of a free weekend event that ends today, attracting new players to the franchise while encouraging fans to revisit the title.
Another factor is that the Deluxe Edition is heavily discounted with 95 per cent off until 11 October. This reduces the price from £59.99 to just £3.00, which is an absolute steal. Before these discounts, NFS Heat was also free on EA Origin for Amazon Prime Day and September’s free PlayStation Plus game.
The discounts and free trials are bringing a huge number of players to NFS just in time for the new Need for Speed 2022 game rumoured to be revealed this week after several months of leaks and rumours.
Supposedly called Need for Speed Unbound, NFS 2022 has a 2 December release date according to EA insider Tom Henderson.