Just Cause Dev's Hunting Game Adds Kangaroo-Filled Australian Expansion

Free-to-play hunting game The Hunter, created by Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios subsidiary Expansive Worlds, has reached a major new milestone.

The game now has more than 5 million registered players. This makes it "the largest virtual hunting community in the world," according to the developer. Expansive Worlds notes that 80 percent of all players joined in the past 22 months, suggesting interest in the game is increasing.

The Hunter is arguably the most well-known hunting game for PC, while there are pages and pages of hunting titles available for mobile devices. Another top hunting video game brand is Activision's Cabela's Hunting franchise.

Expansive Worlds also released more stats about The Hunter to mark the milestone.

To date, The Hunter players have:

• Walked 72 million kilometers.
• Spent a total of 2500 years in-game.
• Hit their targets more than 63 million times (but missed more than 50 million times).
• Found more than 240 000 chantarelles, 1826 rare golden eggs and 54 million not quite so rare piles of poop.

In addition, Expansive Worlds on Friday released The Hunter's next expansion. The add-on, called "Bushranger's Run," is a new hunting reserve set in the Australian outback.

Among other creatures, players can hunt kangaroos in the new expansion. Kangaroos are, according to Expansive Worlds, the fastest, most agile animal in The Hunter, making them tough to take down. Check out the image gallery below for a closer look at the add-on.

In addition to The Hunter's Bushranger's Run expansion, Expansive Worlds is working on The Hunter: Primal, a dinosaur-themed spinoff. Development on that game will not affect production on the regular version of The Hunter, the studio previously promised.

The Hunter franchise has been in development since 2009.

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