Grinding Gear GamesPath of Exile 2 is back on the map after its player count skyrockets to almost 30x its usual turnout, and it’s all thanks to three major events.
Despite releasing in December 2024 to an impressive player count, Path of Exile 2 has struggled to keep up its player base. When it was released, it hit a peak of 578,562 players according to Steam Charts, but since then, it’s dropped to just 13,000 as of July 2025.
Well, that’s about the change, after three major shifts prompted players to come back in their thousands, increasing the game’s player count by over 300,000 in just a few days.
Path of Exile 2 player count booms for three major reasons
As of the time of writing, Path of Exile 2 has hit a 24-hour peak player count of 352,104, a little smaller than its all-time peak, but a huge jump considering it went from around 10,000 to this number in such a short time.
This is primarily owed to the free weekend. Spanning from August 29 to September 1, anyone could dive into PoE2 for free.
Dexerto / Steam ChartsWhile that’s often a key reason for interested players to try it out, it’s also backed up by the fact that we’ve just had a major update, The Third Edict, which was also available free during the weekend.
Complementing this is the new league that came out on August 29. As we’ve seen in PoE1, many player count spikes are owed to new leagues as players dive back in and try out all the new features.
Despite this, the player count is holding extremely strong, with hundreds of thousands of players enjoying the game over the weekend. Whether it keeps it up throughout the new League is yet to be seen, but it’s certainly proving to be incredibly popular.
