Sloclap shoots, then scores as Rematch hits 3 million players, proving there’s a surprising overlap between sports and fighting game fans

Rematch is a hit—nonchalantly dribbling its way to one million players on its first day of release. It’s the latest game by Sloclap, who you might know from Sifu and Absolver—a brawler and a fighting game respectively, if you’ve been paying attention. The studio’s gotten the art of kicking the crap out of someone down pat.

Well, it’s continuing to crush it. Rematch has just hit three million players, per the game’s official X account—that’s presumably across platforms. It seems like the football (or ‘soccer’ if you’re wrong) game has some solid staying power, too. At the time of writing, its 24-hour peak on Steam is still a very respectable 78,500.

“For those keeping score, that’s 11.8 million matches played, 55.6 million goals scored, 33.5 million assists, and 69.1 million saves,” boasts the announcement post.

It’s not hard to see why. A lack of crossplay and some netcode issues aside, Rematch is a banger. It’s taken Sloclap’s expertise with fighting games and applied them to football and, being honest, there’s a lot more in the way of crossover than I’d have imagined.

How do I know? Well, I don’t really like sports—but I had a whale of a time playing Rematch during one of its betas, because the fundamental principles from my time with Sifu, Absolver, and other fighting games like Guilty Gear: Strive were still the same. Rematch has a small enough team size to make fundamentals like positioning, footsies, and mixups a thing.

So I’m not at all shocked it’s flying off the pitch. The only spanner in the mix was that I wasn’t 1v1-ing anybody, but as soon as I understood that passing to your mate is also a mixup, I was about ready to lock in. Unlike some people. You know who you are. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be working on my tekkers (did I get that right?)