Aion 2 Hits No. 1 on Steam Top Sellers Before Its Free-to-Play Launch, All on the Back of Founders' Packs
By CriticalPixel ·
Aion 2 has not even opened its doors to everyone yet, and it is already the number one seller on Steam. According to Eurogamer, the NCsoft MMORPG took the top spot on Steam's Top Sellers chart while it is still locked behind paid early access, and its founders' packs have out-earned EA FC 27, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve and Gears of War: E-Day this week. The Steam listing puts the free-to-play launch at October 5, so the gate is about to swing wide on a game that has already collected its money from the people who could not wait. That is a very modern way to launch an MMO, and it deserves a closer look before the hype machine fully spins up.
How a free game topped the sales chart
Here is the odd part. Aion 2 is a free-to-play game, but right now the only way in is to buy a founders' pack. Eurogamer reports that the cheapest one costs 18.49 pounds and comes with a stack of in-game cosmetics and consumables, and that is the entry point flying off the shelves. The Steam page shows the game as free with a pre-load button, and lists NC as both developer and publisher. So the Top Sellers chart is not counting copies of a game, it is counting paid shortcuts into something that will cost nothing within days. Revenue from those packs is what beat the big recent releases on Eurogamer's comparison, which tells you how much a free-to-play launch can still print when the early access gate is priced right.
The player numbers back it up
Money is one thing, players are another. Eurogamer says Aion 2 currently sits at number nine on Steam's Most Played chart, above Delta Force but below PUBG, Apex Legends and the recent multiplayer sensation Wardogs. Those numbers come entirely from founders, since everyone else cannot log in yet, so the real test arrives once the gate opens and the game goes free. Eurogamer expects the climb to continue from there. Steam shows 75 percent positive across 6,145 user reviews, which is solid for an MMO but a long way from the glowing consensus a launch like this usually gets pitched with. Treat that figure as a snapshot from a paid early access crowd, not a verdict on the finished game.
This is not a debut
Aion 2 launched in Korea and Taiwan roughly a year ago, so the worldwide release is a second act, not a surprise. The original Aion was a huge Korean MMO back in the day, and Eurogamer's Oli Welsh came away impressed when the outlet reviewed it in 2009. NCsoft is clearly hoping that legacy still means something to players who remember flying around as a winged Daeva, and to a newer crowd that never touched the first game. A year of regional play also means the studio has had time to tune things before a Western audience piles in. Whether that tuning went into the right places, combat feel, grind pacing or the cash shop, is the open question.
What kind of MMO it is
The pitch on Steam is a world where the sky is the battlefield, with faction warfare between Daeva and a world the page says is 36 times bigger than the original Aion. It runs on Unreal Engine 5, and Steam tags it as an open world MMORPG with heavy character customization. Eurogamer's writer says the combat sits between classic tab-target and the more action-driven feel of Black Desert Online, with flying, pet collecting by killing enemies out in the world, more than 1,100 achievements and a mix of PvP and PvE events. They admit they have not put in enough hours for a proper critique, but called the early stretch a lot of fun. Eurogamer lists the game for Android, iOS and PC while the Steam page frames it as a PC game, so how the platforms line up at launch is worth confirming before you plan around it.
Early reaction is mixed
Reaction is split, and I only have a handful of posts to go on, so read this as limited rather than a consensus. On X, a few players are gushing about the character creator, with one calling it gorgeous. Others are already throwing the pay to win label at the cash shop, while a few push back and ask what actually makes it that way. One commenter surveying the upcoming MMO crop described the reception as lukewarm. Steam's 75 percent positive score sits right in the middle of those moods. Nobody can fully judge the monetization until the free crowd shows up and the shop gets tested at scale.
The CriticalPixel take
Founders' packs are the part I would watch. Charging people to get into a game that is about to be free is a smart revenue trick and a slightly grim one, because it turns impatience into a product. Topping the Steam sales chart with that model says more about early access FOMO than about the game itself, though the number nine spot on Most Played shows plenty of those buyers also showed up to play. The risk for NCsoft is the cliff after launch day, when the paying crowd gets absorbed by a free crowd that never bought a pack. If the cash shop leans anywhere near the pay to win accusations flying around right now, goodwill will vanish fast. If it stays cosmetic, this could be a rare Western breakout for a Korean MMO.
Aion 2 opens to everyone on October 5 per its Steam listing, so we will know within a week whether the founders' stampede was a launch spike or the start of something with legs. For now it is the best-selling thing on Steam that you cannot yet play for free, and that sentence alone says plenty about where MMO launches stand in 2026. I will be watching the player count once the gate drops, and the first cash shop patch notes even harder.
Sources
Eurogamer: Aion 2 worldwide release, founders' pack sales and player numbers