Dying Light 2 a Year Later; Review Bombed by Italians, Here's Were it is Now
Dying Light 2 just celebrated its first anniversary of release. We check out how the game that took flak for lack of Italian dubbing at launch is doing in 2023.
February 4 marked one year since the release of Dying Light 2 on PC, PS4, PS5, XONE and XSX/S. The work by Techland turned out to be a huge success, quickly becoming the second Polish game with the highest number of players ever on Steam (losing only to Cyberpunk 2077).
Dying Light 2 was also appreciated on Steam - even though it is the work of studio FromSoftware that took the title of game of the year in the community vote, Dying Light 2 ended up both on the list of the highest-grossing games of 2022 on Valve's platform, as well as the biggest launches or titles that set activity records.
Certainly a lot of credit for this goes to Techland, which did not stay idle after the release of Dying Light 2. The developer added new infected enemies, equipment and weapons to the game, as well as previously unavailable challenges and missions. In addition, the team regularly held events to keep the community interested. The devs also enriched the game with a New Game Plus mode or numerous minor and one major DLC - Bloody Ties.
DYING LIGHT SERIES SALES
Techland announced recently that both installments of Dying Light have sold a total of 30 million copies. Not surprisingly, the developer's stock prices has increased significantly, thanks to which, together with CD Projekt Red it is currently driving gamedev in its native country.
The future of Dying Light 2 also looks bright. However, let's take a step back to see how the past year looks in numbers.
Popularity levels
Although the peak of the title's popularity was around the time of its release - when nearly 275,000 people played it on Steam - it still remains at a pretty good level. As I write these words, the game is running on the accounts of about 11.5 thousand users of Valve's platform. During the last 24 hours, a maximum of more than 18 thousand played at the same time. It is worth adding that despite the release of the second game, the first still does not lose interest of the community. However, it is apparent that many people have switched to the sequel.
Players are completing Dying Light 2....
Significantly, the game is completed quite often. This is informed by the "Your world, your rules" achievement. Taking into account data from all platforms (below), it can be concluded that on average, every third player has reached its finale. As it takes at least 24 hours, we can talk about a really good result.
Dying Light 2 - percentage of players who completed the game
- PC (Steam) - 34,3%
- PS4 - 30,4%
- PS5 - 30,8%
- XONE and XSX/S - 26,5%
What's more, this is not too different from what the first installment of Dying Light can boast. Admittedly, it was completed more often and by a larger number of players in total, but one must take into account that they had not a year, but eight years to do so.
Dying Light - percentage of players who completed the game
- PC (Steam) - 37,3%
- PS4 - 37,2%
- XONE - 30%
...but they do not "max it out"
However, while Dying Light 2 is completed quite often, the same cannot be said about the frequency of "maxing out" the game. Achievements also tell us about this. Only a single-digit percentage of players - on every platform - maxed out stamina or health, defeated all GRE anomalies, collected all drops, discovered all graffitis, found a full set of records or notes.
Is it difficult? No - time-consuming is a better word. "Maxing out" Dying Light 2 takes about 96 hours, which is almost four times longer than completing the game. Interestingly, the scale in comparison to the prequel has been preserved here as much as possible, but the latter can be completed in 17 hours.
DLC for the few
Interestingly, relatively few people were tempted by the - otherwise quite good - DLC titled Bloody Ties. Suffice it to say that the Carnage Hall, where the main action of the expansion takes place, was reached by only 2.5% of players on Steam (while completing the "Enter the Amphitheater" achievement). It's even worse on consoles.
Could it be that the players were satisfied with the base game, which, after all, the vast majority of them didn't max out anyway? Or perhaps it was harmed by unflattering reviews? Unless many people are simply waiting for the complete release of the game.
Reviews after the "Italian incident" and the price.
Perhaps in some time we will see it. Nevertheless Dying Light 2 could already be bought for quite an attractive price. First such big promotion on Valve's platform (available as part of the autumn sale) particularly helped Techland's game, as it offset at least some of the negative reviews the title received at launch - be it for the presence of Denuvo (recently removed), or for the lack of Italian dubbing. Boy, was that a thing. Do you remember? Nevertheless, it did nothing - the people of Villedor still do not speak Italian.
Overall, it can be said that the review bombing has not had much effect on the perception of Dying Light 2 - at least on Steam, because on Metacritic.com its impact is still quite visible.
With more than 124 thousand reviews of DL2 in total, on Valve's platform positives constitute approx. 79%. A bit short of the first game - 95% positive reviews out of over 365,000 issued - but overall it's not bad. It can also be assumed that the second game has not yet said its last word.
