With how the state of the gaming industry is nowadays, nothing comes as a surprise. All sorts of titles have risen through the ranks and conquered the market, but if you were to tell me a game about ducks with guns beating AAA behemoths, I'd never believe you.
But that is exactly what has happened. Escape from Duckov, a strange extraction shooter that puts you in control of a duck in what seems a post-apocalyptic, heavily-militarized world, has smashed through Steam's concurrent player charts and even managed to beat Battlefield 6. The title peaked at over 260,000 players (thanks SteamDB), briefly overtaking EA's blockbuster to become the third-most popular shooter on the platform, just slightly behind PUBG, which is free-to-play.
And yes, Duckov is a paid title, which only adds to the layers of mystery as to how this game managed to become so popular. However, it is a big thing in China at the moment, which could be contributing to the game's sudden and sharp rise, as well as its huge dips the closer we are to Chinese evening hours. That's just a theory, but a probable one.
Even so, Escape from Duckov came out of nowhere, catching us all by surprise with its super weird style. We gave it a 7, praising the game for being unique, but criticizing its many drawbacks, not least because we couldn't understand who the audience for such a thing might be. Many people, it'd turn out, but I still have no clue as to why you'd be paying to play this instead of a proper extraction shooter.
Games really do work in mysterious ways.
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The post Ducks with guns are taking over Steam, and not even Battlefield 6 can stand up to them appeared first on Destructoid.
