Atomfall’s Day-One Launch on Game Pass Marks Developer’s Biggest Success in Over Three Decades

Developer Rebellion is perhaps best known for the Sniper Elite series, but the UK’s studio latest release, Atomfall, is now the developer’s “most successful launch” in its 32-year history.

Atomfall launched in full on March 27 and reached 1 million players over its first weekend, climbing further to more than 1.5 million so far. The post-apocalyptic survival game was inspired by the real-world Windscale nuclear incident in the 1950s. The game has been referred to by some as “British Fallout.”

“To have surpassed the 1 million players in such a short space of time speaks volumes for the creativity and dedication of the entire team here at Rebellion,” the developer’s CEO and co-founder, Jason Kingsley, said in a statement. “Our size and stability mean that we can take risks to create something as different as Atomfall. Happily, that risk is paying off.”

Rebellion also shared some other stats from launch, including:

• 316,000 players killed the scientist at the start of the game
• Players have used the cricket bat 3.7 million times to rack up kills.
• More than 4 million pasties and 300,000 cups of tea have been consumed.

Atomfall no doubt benefitted in terms of player numbers by launching into the Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass game catalogs. Rebellion did not, however, say how many copies of Atomfall have been sold across all platforms, including Xbox and PlayStation consoles, as well as PC.

In fact, there is no indiciation at all as to how Rebellion is measuring success for Atomfall. Also unknown is how much Atomfall cost to develop or market. As always, game development budgets remain mysterious. What we do know is Atomfall is not Rebellion’s first Game Pass day-one release, as Sniper Elite: Resistance was a Game Pass launch as well.

GameSpot’s Atomfall review scored the game a 7/10. Reviewer Mark Delaney wrote, “Atomfall is a good game that sometimes gets in its own way, but it’s the process of finding your unique path through its story that will stick with you after the dust settles.”