AEW Fight Forever’s 30-player mode arrives this week, as average Steam player count drops below 30

AEW Fight Forever will get its promised 30-player mode this week, just as the Steam version’s average player count has dropped below 30 for the first time.

The game’s free Stadium Stampede mode will be released on August 24, and offers a 30-player battle royale mode in which players run around a large empty stadium filled with weapons and other items.

As the match continues, the area in which wrestlers can fight gets smaller, eventually pushing all players into the centre, with the last player surviving being the winner.

The mode was originally teased back in July, but the game’s average player count on Steam has been steadily dropping since then and, as spotted by Twitter user rj-t2, has just dropped below the 30-player mark.

According to SteamDB, when the game launched in June it enjoyed a peak concurrent player count of 2,210 with a daily average of around 1,200.

This has been slowly decreasing since launch, as often happens with games, but on Monday it dropped below 30 players for the first time, with an average concurrent player count of 29. This dropped further to 24 on Tuesday.

The figures mean that even if every single Steam player chooses to play Stadium Stampede at exactly the same time, they more likely than not wouldn’t be able to make up the full 30-player roster.

The game also doesn’t support cross-play between PC and console, meaning Steam owners won’t be able to make up the numbers with Xbox and PlayStation players.

The overall picture may not be as bad as it initially seems – when a game receives notable new DLC, like Stadium Stampede is, it can result in a surge of new and returning players to a game.

AEW’s upcoming All In pay-per-view event, which takes place at Wembley Stadium on August 27, will also see a surge in interest in AEW and may lead to more people checking out the game.

It’s also not yet clear if the game will fill missing player slots with bots, which would at least make the mode playable even if the player count remains low.

VGC’s AEW Fight Forever review says the game “gets a lot more right than it does wrong”.

“Its Story mode may be a little short and it may be lacking when it comes to customisation options, but its solid in-ring combat system, its sense of humour and its emphasis on violence make it a viable, edgier alternative to the glossy WWE 2K series,” we wrote.