4,983,758 games were played last month. No games publication has ever reviewed it.
Both of those are true, and the gap between them is the reason for this post.
What OpenFront is
A massively multiplayer real-time strategy game. A hundred or more players carve up a world map in real time. There's no base building and no unit micro — the depth is diplomatic. Alliances form mid-match and break at the worst possible moment, usually from someone you spent twenty minutes trusting.
It runs free in a browser tab, no download and no account, and it has done for years. The Steam client is new. The game isn't.
The numbers
We've never published these before. July 2025 against July 2026:
- Games in a month: 1,066,159 → 4,983,758 — 4.7× more
- Sessions in a month: 5,155,339 → 14,329,952 — 2.8× more
- All time: 47,369,968 games and 145,551,939 player sessions
Our public roadmap for 2026 set a target of 100,000 players a day. OpenFront has been running at over 200,000 for months.
How that happened, which is the strange part
No publisher. No marketing budget. No advertising. No games media coverage — not one preview, not one review, ever. There wasn't a store page until this year.
It grew because players sent the link to other players, and because creators picked it up and their audiences followed. That's the whole distribution strategy. There isn't a second half to it.
The same is true of the game itself. OpenFront exists in 35+ languages because players translated it, unpaid. Maps, moderation, guides, clans, tournaments and chunks of the code came from people who play it.
If you're deciding whether a game with no reviews is worth your attention: that's the answer. Nobody was ever paid to tell you about it.
So why charge for it on Steam
Fair question, and it's the one we get most.
OpenFront pays for itself today. The servers are covered and nobody is about to switch anything off. If all we wanted was to keep it running exactly as it is, we wouldn't need to sell anything.
We just think that would waste what's been built here.
- Phones. The most requested thing by a distance. A hundred players on one map, in your pocket.
- Weirder stuff. Someone asks us about VR most weeks. Standing over the map while a war happens on it is an idea we'd love to chase properly.
- This game, but better. More maps, more modes, servers that don't flinch, more people working on it full time instead of around a job.
None of that runs on goodwill. The Steam edition is how people who want to fund it can — and the browser version at openfront.io stays free forever. That isn't changing. Steam is a second front, not a paywall.
To be clear, that list is what we want to build, not a roadmap with dates. We mentioned achievements back in July and they may not be ready for launch. We'd rather say so now than let it slide quietly. Same rule for everything above — we announce things when they're real.
Wishlist it
OpenFront hits Steam Early Access in Q3 2026. Wishlisting tells Steam this game matters, and you get a notification the moment it goes live.
You don't have to wait, though. It's free in a browser right now at openfront.io, and the lobbies fill in seconds at any hour. Go and find out whether you like it before you spend anything — that's always been the deal.
If you already play: we want your story
The figures above are the least interesting thing about any of this. The alliance that held for forty minutes and then didn't isn't.
Tell us how you found OpenFront, the match you still think about, the betrayal you haven't forgiven. Or nominate someone else — a clan leader, a translator, a mapmaker, whoever taught you to play.
Submit here: forms.gle/PTyARsCurBksv5J56 — closes Sunday 6 September.
We'll publish the best of them before launch. Anonymous is fine.
And there's an announcement on Monday
Monday 24 August. Live on stream from Germany: twitch.tv/iiamlewis
We're at gamescom next week, showing OpenFront to press for the first time in its life. The announcement lands while we're there, and our Discord has the countdown with the time in your own timezone.
Discord: discord.gg/openfront
See you on the front.
— Lewis, and the OpenFront team