Player Count for 11-Year-Old Steam Game is Suddenly Blowing Up

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After eleven years, the popular space program simulator Kerbal Space Program on Steam has reached a new record for the number of players playing at the same time. The game first officially launched in 2015, reaching around 19,000 peak players. Now, over a decade later, it’s seen a huge surge in popularity, surpassing that previous record.

In Kerbal Space Program, you take on the challenge of launching a quirky alien species, the Kerbals, into space and completing missions throughout the solar system. The game lets you build and experiment with spacecraft using realistic physics, letting you see if you can successfully send your Kerbals on their journeys. Beyond the main Career and Science modes, the game’s Sandbox Mode became incredibly popular thanks to the fun and creative things players could build.

Kerbal Space Program Player Count Peaks at Over 20,000 Players Following the Artemis 2 Spaceflight

According to SteamDB, over 20,000 people played Kerbal Space Program in April 2026. This is a new record, surpassing the player count from the game’s original launch in 2015 by almost 1,000 players – and it happened 11 years after the game first came out! While Kerbal Space Program remains a classic physics simulator, there’s a clear reason for this sudden increase in popularity.

The recent NASA Artemis 2 mission, which launched on April 1st, probably got a lot of Kerbal Space Program players excited to revisit the game. Artemis 2 was a nine-day flight around the moon, with astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, and Reid Wiseman completing the first crewed mission beyond Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The crew successfully finished their flight and returned to Earth on April 10th, landing in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, California.

Inspired by the recent Artemis 2 mission, players turned to Kerbal Space Program to simulate the journey. The game lets dedicated fans experience everything NASA does, from designing and building rockets to launching them and performing intricate maneuvers in space. Kerbal Space Program doesn’t just stop at recreating Artemis 2, though – players can also build space stations and even explore entirely new planets.

Although a sequel to Kerbal Space Program exists (Kerbal Space Program 2), it has received very negative reviews on Steam. Released in early access in 2023, the sequel was already met with criticism because it was developed by a different studio, Intercept Games, instead of the original developer, Squad. In 2024, Take-Two Interactive shut down Intercept Games and laid off most of the Kerbal Space Program 2 team, leading to a flood of negative reviews and uncertainty about the game’s future. Meanwhile, the original Kerbal Space Program is doing well, benefiting from continued mod support and a resurgence in interest in spaceflight simulation, especially after the Artemis 2 mission.

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2026-04-13 00:35