First year of Fellowship: from 43,205 players to a few hundred

This is the story of Fellowship's first year on Steam: how the launch crowd thinned out, what each season did, and what the people behind the game have said. For today's figures, see the current Fellowship player count and UK price.

The launch

Chief Rebel, a Stockholm studio founded in 2018, announced Fellowship with Arc Games on 1 August 2024 as a "multiplayer online dungeon adventure": short co-op dungeon runs with MMO-style heroes and loot. After a closed alpha, an open beta in September 2025 and a one-week delay, it launched in Early Access on Steam on 16 October 2025 for £20.99.

The rush was bigger than the servers expected. Icy Veins reported login and matchmaking problems in the first hours. Steam Charts recorded an average of 23,137 players online in October and a peak of 43,205.

The fall, and the seasonal spikes

Month	Average players	Peak players	What happened
October 2025	23,137	43,205	Early Access launch
November 2025	10,046	30,865	Publisher changes to Coffee Stain
December 2025	2,515	7,206
January 2026	846	2,764
February 2026	2,240	14,274	Season 2: two new heroes, full reset
March 2026	1,175	5,693
April 2026	311	943
May 2026	156	366
June 2026	2,017	13,056	Season 3: Rise of the Heskyr
July 2026	2,680	8,452
August 2026	653	1,813	New seasons stopped
September 2026	292	756
October 2026	611	3,359	Progress reset and Adventure Mode (22 October)
Last 30 days to 11 Nov 2026	676	3,359

Each new season brought thousands of players back for a few weeks (Season 2's peak of 14,274 was a third of launch), and each time the numbers fell back to a few hundred within about two months. By May 2026 the average was 156. The October 2026 reset brought a smaller bump: a peak of 3,359, about a quarter of Season 3's.

What Coffee Stain and Chief Rebel said

On 26 November 2025, after Embracer sold Arc Games, Fellowship moved into the Coffee Stain portfolio.

On 5 August 2026 Coffee Stain's chief executive told investors the game "has had a rocky start since we took it over" and that Season 3 "has not had the impact that we needed". Its finance chief said the team was "going from a headcount from 35 to approximately 15".

The next day Chief Rebel said on a livestream that it was "effectively ending seasonal content additions". It gave lower player counts and longer queues, new players leaving early, Season 3 bugs and a small team as reasons, and said it would work on bug fixes, then balance, then quality of life, on the way to a 1.0 release. No date was given.

On 22 October 2026 the "Halloween Reset" went live. Chief Rebel reset every player's progress, called the update "an Alpha for Fellowship 1.0", replaced the League system with a more casual Adventure Mode, and added multi-hero queueing, loot changes and a new dungeon. It was not a new season.

Is it worth buying?

That depends on whether you have a group. With an average of a few hundred players on Steam, solo matchmaking queues will be longer than at launch, which the developer itself has said. The game is £20.99 on Steam UK, still in Early Access, and Steam's notice says the price will likely rise at full release. If player numbers change, the Fellowship page will show it.