New Game from Elite Dangerous Developers Becomes Steam Hit, Surpassing Counter-Strike 2

Planet Zoo 2 from the creators of Elite Dangerous has become one of Steam's top sellers, gathering over 45,000 concurrent players after its release on October 13, 2026.

The sequel to the economic zoo simulator rose to second place on Steam by revenue, second only to Dota 2. At the time of publication, it ranks sixth. The game temporarily surpassed Counter-Strike 2 and AION 2 – the MMORPG had previously held a top spot in the rankings.

Planet Zoo 2's peak online concurrent players exceeded 45,000 – and this is just Steam statistics. The simulator also launched on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, where it could also have shown good results.

Image source: SteamDB

User reviews on Steam are currently mixed: about 72% of opinions are positive. Critic scores are significantly higher – the game's average score is 85% after 15 reviews on Metacritic.