Fewer people are playing Kerbal Space Program 2 than the original game

Little over a week after its Early Access release, Kerbal Space Program 2‘s player count has fallen below that of the first game.

The game, which entered Early Access late last month, has been criticised by fans citing a litany of bugs and frame-rate issues. Currently, with over 10,000 reviews, the game has a “mixed” rating on Steam.

This has seemingly translated to players leaving the game and returning to the original.

As Eurogamer points out, independent Steam tracker SteamDB lists that in the last 24 hours,  8,623 players have played Kerbal Space Program, compared to 3,642 users playing Kerbal Space Progam 2.

Kerbal Space Progam 2 saw an all-time speak of 25,724 at launch, around 6,000 players more than the original game. However, while the original Kerbal Space Program has retained a steady number of players, Kerbal Space Program 2 has at times dropped to 1002 players at its lowest.

The development team committed prior to entering Early Access that it would address fan concerns swiftly, saying: “By releasing in Early Access, we are entering a new phase in which players get to experience greatly anticipated systems, features, updates and more as they come online.

“We will be listening and seeing the reactions to these changes; and much like the original game, this journey will help us leverage a massively powerful tool: our passionate community.”

Nate Simpson, creative director of Kerbal Space Program 2, took to the game’s official forums to address some of the feedback and to detail the game’s first major patch.

“It’s been so exciting to see what you’ve done with KSP2’s new parts, and even though there have been some bumps in the road,” wrote Simpson. “It’s been so fun to explore the new Kerbolar System through your eyes.”

The Early Access update is claimed to be scheduled to take place “in the next couple of weeks,” and will contain a large number of fixes below.

Kerbal Space Program 2 Early Access Update patch notes