Lack of Iconic Helmets Bothers Players, but Space Marine 2 Is Warhammer's Biggest Steam Hit
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is the biggest success in the brand's history, if you look at the peak player numbers on Steam.
Space Marine 2 has officially become the biggest success in the history of Warhammer on Steam. Yesterday, the second installment of the imperial action games from Saber Interactive studio surpassed its own pre-release record, with over 225.5 thousand players simultaneously playing the game on its debut day.
Space Marine 2 more popular than Total War: Warhammer 3
To date, the most popular Games Workshop-licensed title was Total War: Warhammer 3, which at its peak attracted almost 167,000 users on Valve's platform. So, Space Marine 2 significantly surpassed the result of the previous record holder. Let's remember that SM 2 is also available on consoles, while Creative Assembly's game was released exclusively on PCs.
Needless to say, Space Marine 2 is currently Steam's biggest bestseller. It's also among the most frequently played games, and while it's far from the records of Black Myth: Wukong, Baldur's Gate 3, or Dota 2, the title made it into the top ten rankings (at the time of publishing this text, the game was ranked 7th) . On a side note: Russians are the most likely to buy SM 2 on PC (via Gamalytic), making up about 29% of buyers.
It's easy to point out the reason for this success: Warhammer doesn't have many successful action games, especially those with a single-player campaign. The brand has received many highly rated strategies since the first installment of the Dawn of War series, but when it comes to "action games" the choice was modest (malicious fans would say it's the curse of Fire Warrior; no, even nostalgia doesn't help here).
In the meantime, the original Space Marine performed quite well, and the second installment clearly outperformed the first one. It's not the best-reviewed game of the year, but an average review score of 82-83/100 (via Metacritic) and 80% positive reviews on Steam (out of over 41 thousand opinions) is a more than satisfactory result.
Where are the beaked helmets of the Raven Guard?
Of course, you can always find something to complain about, and Space Marine 2 is definitely far from perfect. Nonetheless, one of the allegations is quite unusual. Fans of Warhammer 40,000 demand from Saber Interactive that the developers add to the game, among others: "beaked" helmets.
That refers to a piece of equipment that is a part of the Mark 6 "Corvus" armor, used by the Raven Guard Legion. This model is available in SM2, except without the distinctive helmet, which - as the name suggests - may loosely be associated with the beak of ravens. This appearance is what made the helmet popular among fans, and the lack of it clearly annoys them. Just like a few other older models (including the MK VII), the SM 2 mainly replaced the helmets of the so-called Primaris.
Most players believe that the "beaked" helmet will make it into the game sooner or later. Some internet users fear that acquiring it will be associated with microtransactions. Saber Interactive has confirmed that the only paid add-on will be DLC packs containing cosmetic items, so there is no need for concern.
