Rotwood peaks at over 25k concurrent players, but faces wave of negative reviews from Chinese players

Don’t Starve developer Klei Entertainment has just released its new game, action roguelite Rotwood. Let’s take a closer look at its initial numbers and player reception.

Launched in Early Access on Arpil 24, Rotwood is a co-op dungeon crawler with and roguelite elements. It featuers a beat ’em up-style camera angle and combat system, with players having to fight corrupted beasts using a variety of weapons and skills.

In its first 24 hours, the game peaked at 25,312 concurrent players (via SteamDB). This makes Rotwood the third-best game in Klei Entertainment’s portfolio in terms of peak CCU:

• Don’t Starve Together — 115.9k CCU;
• Oxygen Not Included — 27.4k CCU;
• Rotwood — 25.3k CCU;
• Don’t Starve — 16.7k CCU;
• Griftlands — 7.6k CCU.

Rotwood currently has a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, with 80% of the 741 user reviews being positive. Most players praise its colorful cartoonish graphics, fun combat, challenging boss fights, the variety of enemies, and character customization.

The impressive launch, however, was slightly overshadowed by a wave of negative reviews from Chinese players. Rotwood is currently only localized into English and Simplified Chinese, and the latter accounts for over 96% of all negative reviews (via Steam Scout). In China, the game has a “Mixed” (68% positive) rating — for comparison, 98% of reviews written in English are positive.

It is hard to say why so many Chinese users dislike Rotwood, as criticism is directed at various elements, ranging from the difficulty curve and gear system to matchmaking and spongy bosses. Sot is interesting that players from other countries are not that harsh on the game’s core mechanics.

Founded in 2005, Klei Entertainment first rose to fame with side-scrolling games Shank and Mark of the Ninja, but most players likely know the studio for its survival titles Don’t Starve and Oxygen Not Included. After Tencent acquired a majority stake in the company, Klei managed to reach the Chinese audience — for example, Don’t Starve received a publishing license in the country two years ago.

Rotwood follows Klei Entertainment’s tradition of launching games in Early Access. The studio plans to collect player feedback, release new content updates, and add support for more languages, with the EA period expected to last one to two years.