New free PvP mech shooter with flashy graphics and slick aerial combat tops Steam player charts hours after launch
After a handful of betas — which seemingly won over many fans — Mecha Break finally launched on Steam on July 1 as a free-to-play multiplayer third-person shooter that puts players at the helm of a giant battle mech. Almost immediately after launch, Mecha Break skyrocketed to 95,000 concurrent players, reaching just over 132,000 concurrent players a mere eight hours after launch. This puts the new multiplayer game at 11th place in the SteamDB Most Played Games chart, right behind Banana and Elden Ring Nightreign. Mecha Break Demo, the early beta of the game, attracted over 300,000 players at its peak, showing that there is still room to grow.
Despite the apparent popularity, Mecha Break did not launch without its fair share of criticism, with many players and fans criticising the full release of the game because of changes made between the last beta and the 1.0 launch.
Mecha Break is a PvP and PvE mecha shooter, meaning players engage in open battle piloting giant robots, and success means improving your character and load-out with better loot and weapons before extracting to safety.
Mecha Break criticisms and reviews
Even before launching as a full version 1.0, Mecha Break earned some criticism for its use of AI-generated speech, and, although that has since been removed and replaced by actual voice acting, a slew of negative reviews on Steam bemoan the addition of microtransactions. While many of these claims seem to be exaggerated, with other players pointing out that you can still earn in-game currency to buy cosmetics and additional weapons.
On the whole, Mecha Break is getting a lot of praise from its player base for its slick movement mechanics, fast-paced combat, and the fact that most of the playable mechs are already unlocked from the start of the game — only three out of 15 currently available are locked, and they can be unlocked with in-game currency. This point has come up a handful of time in players comments defending the game, with many asking why people are upset about a few cosmetics being locked behind a paywall in a free game.
Despite the minor controversy, though, Mecha Break still carries a 63% positive rating on Steam, with 4,260 positive reviews and 2,450 negative reviews since launch, as of the time of writing.
Source(s)
