Aion 2 tops Steam sellers with paid early access before free launch
A paid head start has put a free game on top of Steam.
Aion 2 reached No. 1 on Steam's Global Top Sellers chart on 30 September, days before its full worldwide launch, according to publisher NCSOFT. The chart ranks games by revenue, not copies sold. That matters here, because the game itself is generally free to play.
Access before launch required a Founder's Pack, a paid bundle that unlocks early play plus extras. The cheapest option cost £18.49 and included in-game cosmetics, meaning outfits and looks, and consumables, meaning one-use items. Founder's Pack sales run from 22 July 2026 to 6 October 2026, according to NCSOFT's official Aion 2 site.
On revenue, those packs outsold three other big names in the same week: EA FC 27, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve and Gears of War: E-Day, Eurogamer reported on 1 October. Player numbers followed. Aion 2 sat ninth on Steam's Most Played chart at the time of reporting, above Delta Force, and drew tens of thousands of players before the global release.
The official launch is set for 5 October 2026, NCSOFT states. Advance Access on PC for Founder's Pack owners runs through 4 October on Steam and Purple, NCSOFT's PC platform. Pre-download opened in September to let buyers install ahead of time.
This is a staggered release. Aion 2 first launched in Korea and Taiwan in November, roughly a year before the worldwide version. NCSOFT had announced a 19 November date for those territories in September 2025, with name reservations from 16 October and pre-character creation from 16 November. Ahead of the global launch, the company also held a creator event called War for Atreia.
So what is it? Aion 2 is an MMORPG, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game where large numbers of players share one evolving world. Steam describes it as a world where the sky is the battlefield. It lists more than 1,100 achievements and a mix of PvP events, player against player, and PvE events, player against computer-controlled enemies. Its combat sits between traditional tab-target fighting, where you lock onto a target to attack, and faster action combat of the style seen in Black Desert Online.
For fans, this means the paywall is brief. The game is expected to open to non-founders within days of the early-access surge and become free to play. If the Steam charts hold after 5 October, the next test will be how many free players stay.
