Split Fiction sells 1 million copies in Two Days

Split Fiction, the new co-op action game from Josef Fares and the team at Hazelight Studios, has proven its market appeal: Hazelight announced today on Bluesky that the game surpassed one million copies sold in just 48 hours after release.

"The love you all show for our game is overwhelming!" the studio wrote. "Everyone here at Hazelight are beyond happy—and we can't stop enjoying your amazing reactions!"

Previous Success Paved the Way for Expectations

By way of comparison, Split Fiction's predecessor, It Takes Two—one of the big successes of 2022—took a full month to reach one million copies sold. This difference is remarkable, and it's worth noting that this million-copy figure doesn't include installations through the "Friend's Pass" edition, which allows players who don't own the game to play along with friends who do. Electronic Arts confirmed to PC Gamer that this figure represents only full copies of the game sold, and doesn't include Friend's Pass installations.

(Also, It Takes Two has a Friend's Pass too, so there's really no imbalance there.)

Expectations Driving Sales Surge

As a guess, the major factor in Split Fiction's accelerated timeline is simple market expectations. A Way Out, Hazelight's first game, performed well but didn't give people reason to expect that It Takes Two would be the surprise hit of 2022 and claim multiple game of the year awards. But it was and it did, which gave people a reason to pay more attention to Split Fiction, and to jump in right from the start.

Game Reception Validates Sales

The good news for all those early adopters is that Split Fiction seems to be living up to the hype. According to SteamDB, its peak concurrent player count on Steam thus far is 259,000, a massive jump over It Takes Two's peak of 71,039. It's also carrying an "overwhelmingly positive" rating across more than 14,000 user reviews.

For cooperative gaming enthusiasts and fans of Hazelight Studios, the success of Split Fiction is undoubtedly exciting news, and demonstrates the powerful appeal of quality cooperative games in today's market.