No More Room in Hell 2 rises from the dead: from 100 players to over a million after 1.0

Some comebacks happen within a single tournament; others take two years to cook. No More Room in Hell 2 belongs to the second group. Torn Banner Studios' co-op zombie horror game hit Steam Early Access almost two years ago with poor performance, a half-finished extraction loop and a lukewarm reception that left it stuck for a long time at an average of around 100 players on the platform. Now, as reported by Gamereactor Spain, the game has just passed one million players barely a week after launching its 1.0 version.

The figure matters more for what it represents than for the number itself. A studio that could have quietly shelved the project decided to keep pushing, and the result is a record 15,027 concurrent players logged earlier this week (SteamDB data) and daily peaks holding above 10,000. In an industry where failed launches rarely get a second chance, it's a reminder that long-term support can still change a game's fate.

What you need to know

• No More Room in Hell 2 launched in Early Access almost two years ago with performance issues and an extraction loop that felt incomplete.
• For much of that period it averaged around 100 players on Steam.
• After the jump to version 1.0, it hit a record 15,027 concurrent players and is posting daily peaks above 10,000.
• Just one week after 1.0 it has passed one million players, doubling its total player base.
• Torn Banner Studios has already confirmed several updates for this year, two of them in autumn, plus plans for 2027.

From irrelevance to record highs

The recent history of No More Room in Hell 2 is a textbook example of what not to do at launch and, at the same time, of what to do afterwards. Early Access promised a co-op survival shooter with real tension, but the first impression was defined by inconsistent performance and a match structure that never quite came full circle. The community responded the way it usually does: it went elsewhere.

What's changed now is the scale. Going from an average of a hundred players to more than 10,000 a day doesn't look like a one-off spike driven by curiosity, at least judging by the SteamDB data cited by Gamereactor Spain. The 1.0 release has worked as a de facto relaunch, and the fact that the total player base doubled in a matter of days shows that new players arrived, not just veterans reinstalling the game.

What's next: autumn and 2027

Torn Banner Studios has made it clear in a Steam blog post that it doesn't consider the job finished. Several updates are planned for this year, two of them confirmed for this autumn, and work is already underway on 2027 content. The broad strokes point to more gameplay variety and improvements to the current experience, in other words, continuing to polish what already works rather than reinventing the game. For those who've just arrived, that means 1.0 isn't the finish line but the starting point of a longer roadmap.

Our take

At Underworld Lordz we love a comeback, but we also know how to read the fine print. Passing one million players is a powerful headline, though the metric that really matters to us as a team is concurrent players: 15,027 at the peak and more than 10,000 daily is a living community, enough to find a match at any hour in both the Americas and Europe. What we don't know yet is how long it will last. The launch effect of a 1.0 release tends to fade, and the real test will come in winter, once the two autumn updates are on the table and we see whether the studio keeps up the pace.

For content creators, this is exactly the kind of game worth keeping on your radar. Co-op horror naturally generates moments for clips and streams, the redemption story provides a narrative angle that hooks people, and jumping in now, with the wave of new players, pays off more than doing it once the conversation has cooled down. That said, proceed with caution: if performance falters again in the upcoming updates, the community will leave as fast as it arrived, because it has already proven once that it doesn't forgive.

From the competitive side we're more skeptical: No More Room in Hell 2 is not an esport, nor do we think it should try to be one; its value lies in cooperation under pressure, not in the rankings. What it is, though, is a wake-up call for the whole industry: a studio with patience and honest communication can rescue a failed launch. Let's hope the example catches on, because there are far too many games abandoned after six months that deserved the same treatment.

What do you think?

Are you giving No More Room in Hell 2 a chance now that it's back from the dead, or did Early Access burn you and you'd rather wait for the autumn updates? Let us know in the team chat or on our Discord.