AION 2 is entering the final stretch before Founder’s Pack Advanced Access with a noticeable increase in Steam interest.
GameGrin’s weekly Steam-trending report for September 14–20 says AION 2 gained 11,887 new Steam followers during that period and climbed nine positions in the weekly ranking.
That metric is different from the concurrent-player peak recorded during the Launch Scale Test. Followers measure how many Steam users choose to keep tracking a game, making the weekly increase a useful signal for pre-launch interest rather than a snapshot of who happened to be online at the same time.
AION 2 added 11,887 followers in the week
GameGrin ranks titles by the number of Steam followers they gained over the week. For AION 2, the report lists:
- +11,887 followers;
- a nine-place rise versus the previous weekly position;
- the fourth-highest follower gain in that specific top-20 list, behind WARDOGS, Dimraeth and Aniimo.
A separate current snapshot from GAMEDATA.wtf shows AION 2 at roughly 81.6K Steam followers. That total changes over time, so it should be read as a live estimate/snapshot rather than a permanent figure.
The timing overlaps with the Launch Scale Test
The September 14–20 window includes AION 2’s Launch Scale Test on September 17 and 18.
That test reached roughly 73.8K concurrent users on Steam at peak, while PURPLE users were outside that Steam count. The follower increase therefore arrived during a week when the game also received a major burst of hands-on exposure, livestream coverage and community discussion.
It would be too strong to say all 11,887 new followers came directly from the test. The same period also included launch-date promotion, the War for Atreia creator campaign and continued storefront visibility.
Still, the overlap is important: interest did not stop at people briefly joining a test client. A significant number of Steam users also chose to continue following the retail game.
Followers and concurrent players answer different questions
The earlier stress-test peak answered one question: how many users showed up at once?
Follower growth answers another: is the pool of people actively watching the game still expanding before release?
For a free-to-play MMO, both matter, but neither guarantees long-term success. The more important post-launch signals will be:
- conversion into Founder’s Pack Advanced Access on September 30;
- free-to-play turnout on October 5;
- player retention beyond the first week;
- review trends after permanent progression begins;
- server population after launch-day curiosity settles.
The next data point is conversion, not another test peak
AION 2 has already demonstrated that it can draw a large short-term testing audience on Steam. The new follower data suggests that pre-launch attention is still building after that test rather than immediately fading.
The next meaningful comparison will be how much of that attention converts into actual launch activity. If follower growth remains elevated through the end of September, the October 5 free-to-play opening could bring significantly more Steam traffic than the already-large Launch Scale Test.
That would also put NC’s launch infrastructure, queue policy and regional server capacity under a much heavier real-world load than the limited test windows did.
Sources
- GameGrin — Weekly Top Trending Games on Steam (14th–20th of September 2026) https://www.gamegrin.com/news/weekly-top-trending-games-on-steam-14th20th-of-september-2026/
- GAMEDATA.wtf — AION 2 Steam data snapshot https://www.gamedata.wtf/3393110.html