Phantom Blade Zero opens big on Steam as outlets split on the peak

Steam just got a new heavyweight: Phantom Blade Zero, the wuxia action game from Chinese studio S-Game, is sitting near the top of Valve’s storefront hours after release, and the numbers are loud. The catch is that nobody agrees on exactly how loud.

The peak concurrent player count depends on who you ask. Eurogamer cites SteamDB at 431,541 at its peak ¹. IGN reports a peak of 448,000 ². Kotaku says it has already topped 700,000, which would make it the 15th most-played launch ever on Steam ³. Those figures are far enough apart that I’d treat the exact peak as unsettled until the dust clears. All three agree on the big picture: this is a very large launch.

On the charts, IGN has it behind only Counter-Strike 2 in most-played games, ahead of PUBG and Dota 2 ². Eurogamer has it as Steam’s second most-played game as well, just below Counter-Strike 2, and leading the global top sellers chart after a 16-place jump this week ¹. IGN adds that it is the best-selling game on Steam by revenue, ahead of Modern Warfare 4, Aion 2 and Probably Stolen ².

There is one wrinkle on the player count. The game is also on PS5, and Sony does not make player numbers public, so the total audience is bigger than any Steam figure shows ².

Sales were strong before anyone logged in. An analyst estimated more than 1 million copies sold ahead of launch across Steam, PS5 and Tencent’s WeGame in China, with nearly two thirds of that from China, Taiwan or Hong Kong ². Another estimate from the same analyst, Rhys Elliott, put it at 850,000 copies across PC and PS5, with the WeGame sales pushing the total well past 1 million ¹.

For the comparison everyone is making, Black Myth: Wukong peaked at 2,415,714 concurrent players on Steam ¹. Elliott does not expect Phantom Blade Zero to match that, though he predicts strong sales this year anyway ¹. Eurogamer’s early read is that the weekend could push peak concurrents well above 500,000 ¹.

For players already on the game, S-Game has shipped a first patch of about 5GB aimed at performance on weaker hardware, including mid-range and lower-end PCs and handhelds ³. The studio also suggests rolling back the latest Nvidia drivers if you hit other performance problems ³. Steam user reviews currently sit at Mostly Positive, per Eurogamer ¹. Creative director Soulframe Liang also posted a letter to fans on launch day ².

Our read: Whatever the true peak, this is a clean win for PC players looking for a big new single-player action release, and a launch day patch aimed at modest hardware is exactly the right kind of fast follow. Standings check: Steam takes the week on momentum, with a new top-two title on its charts, while PS5 gets a quiet assist from a same-day release whose numbers we can’t see. The final whistle on this one comes after the weekend crowds weigh in.

Footnotes

1. Eurogamer, “More Chinese success as Phantom Blade Zero enjoys a big launch and becomes one of Steam’s most played games”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. IGN, “Phantom Blade Zero Tops Steam Charts Hours After Launch”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

3. Kotaku, “Phantom Blade Zero Just Rocketed Onto Steam With +700,000 Concurrent Players”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³