The three million figure comes from a LinkedIn profile (spotted by Twitter user Timur222) belonging to a brand manager for Risk of Rain 2, Chris Faylor, who has been working on Risk of Rain 2 as part of Gearbox Publishing. Describing his current role with Gearbox, Faylor says part of his job has included the “initiation, planning, and execution of marketing projects for Risk of Rain 2, resulting in over 3 million players to date.”
That’s an impressive figure by any measure, but Faylor may actually be lowballing it. According to PlayTracker, which uses a cycling sample analysis to extrapolate user data on games, Risk of Rain 2 has about 4.3 million players. SteamSpy, which uses a proprietary method to extrapolate user data from achievement percentages, estimates anywhere from five to 10 million owners.