Game receives huge free update following 10th anniversary and instantly quintuples its previous player-count high

pcgamer.com:

Geometry Dash is a cheap and cheerful rhythm-based platformer that originally launched on Steam in December 2014. It recently celebrated its 10-year-anniversary (the game released on mobile devices the year before), which would normally see fans and developers reflecting fondly on a well-made game. But turns out developer RobTop Games had far more in store, as it just released a massive new update for the game, almost seven years after the last one.

Update 2.2 adds a new level to Geometry Dash's core experience, a new, Flappy Bird-ish game mode called Swing, a new game-type called Platformer, which comes with four levels, a new collectible, 700 new character icons, and a huge overhaul of its level editor.

In short, it's a substantial expansion of the game, and as reported by PCGamesN, the response of Geometry Dash's fans has been emphatic. According to Steam DB, the game surged to a massive new all-time concurrent player peak of 88,346 players last night, with 42,537 people playing Geometry Dash as I type these words.

Looking closer at the chart, it seems Geometry Dash has been gathering momentum for a while, with its players steadily increasing from 2020, hitting highs of over 15,000 and 16,000 players in 2021 and 2022 respectively. The highest pre-pandemic spike came around the time of the 2.1 update in 2017, with 9,596 players jumping in presumably to try the new update out.

Developer RobTop has been teasing this new update for the last couple of years, which explains some of the increase in new players. But it doesn't explain the big spike in users the game has received over the last 24 hours. In instances like these, the answer is often that the game was picked up by a major streamer or YouTuber. But in this case it