Cyberpunk 2077 is having another moment, but not for the usual reasons.

There is no new expansion, no major patch, and no live-service-style content drop pulling players back into Night City. Instead, CD Projekt Red’s open-world RPG has surged on Steam because the conditions around it have changed: the game is heavily discounted, its reputation has been rebuilt over several years, and the broader conversation around Cyberpunk 2077 is no longer dominated by its disastrous 2020 launch.

Oh, and the recent Wuthering Waves content collaboration for the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime, plus the Season 2 teaser trailer, surely help as well. Not to mention the PS5 Pro update from April, which got me to return for a good chunk of hours.

According to SteamDB, Cyberpunk 2077 recently reached nearly 88,000 concurrent players on Steam, its highest figure in around two and a half years. Steam’s own public stats also showed the game among the platform’s most-played titles on June 29, 2026, with more than 78,000 peak players that day.

For an entirely single-player RPG released more than five years ago, that is a notable achievement, and it doesn't even account for console players.

The most immediate explanation for the sudden spike is undoubtedly the price. Cyberpunk 2077 is currently 70% off on Steam for the next week or so, bringing the base game down to $17.99 in the U.S. during the Steam Summer Sale. That kind of discount matters, especially for a game that has spent years transitioning from “wait and see” to “now it’s worth playing.” 

But the sale alone does not fully explain why Cyberpunk 2077 continues to have this kind of pull. The game’s post-launch transformation has become one of the most visible comeback stories in modern AAA development. Major updates, the 2.0 overhaul, and Phantom Liberty helped reframe Cyberpunk 2077 from a cautionary tale into a long-tail success story. Even when CD Projekt Red is not actively adding new content, the work done over the last several years keeps paying dividends.

Cyberpunk 2077’s current surge shows the value of long-term support even for a single-player game, especially when updates meaningfully address the reasons players hesitated in the first place. Cross-media branding and collaborations with other games can obviously help as well.

It also complicates the idea that older premium games need constant new content to stay relevant. Cyberpunk 2077 is not behaving like a live-service title, but it is benefiting from some of the same long-tail dynamics.

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