S-Game’s Phantom Blade Zero has peaked above 700,000 concurrent players on Steam within its first 24 hours, according to Kotaku, which ranks it as the 15th most-played game at launch in Steam’s history. Beebom cites SteamDB for a more precise all-time peak of 723,876. That’s a big result for a studio that, as Kotaku notes, had only made mobile games before this.
How it got there
The game unlocked on the evening of 28 October in the US, which was 6am on 29 October in the UAE, as we covered in our report on the day-one patch. Reviews had landed earlier in the week and were strong, and Kotaku says the launch-day momentum puts the game within reach of the records set by Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring. Beebom puts numbers on that gap, listing Baldur’s Gate 3 at 875,343 and Hogwarts Legacy at 879,308 concurrent players.
The figure also tops everything else released this year in its category. Noisy Pixel reports that Phantom Blade Zero overtook Resident Evil Requiem, which peaked at 344,214 earlier in 2026, so it’s now Steam’s biggest single-player launch of the year. One caveat applies to the headline number. It counts Steam only, so players on PS5 and the Epic Games Store aren’t included.
Not Black Myth: Wukong
Comparisons with Black Myth: Wukong were inevitable, since both are action games from Chinese developers that arrived with strong word of mouth. Kotaku says Wukong holds the second-biggest concurrent launch on Steam at 2,415,714, roughly a million players behind PUBG’s launch peak. At 700,000-plus, Phantom Blade Zero sits at under a third of that.
Kotaku also points to an analysis by Shenzhen-based consultant Daniel Camilo, who argues the game won’t follow Wukong‘s arc. His reasoning is reach: Phantom Blade Zero is eagerly awaited by core gamers, he wrote, but isn’t a cultural phenomenon even in China. Kotaku adds that Wukong didn’t have to compete with GTA 6 for attention. That game isn’t on PC at launch, though, so it matters less here than it might.
What players are dealing with
A launch spike isn’t the same as staying power, as the player drop-off in Marathon shows. Phantom Blade Zero is a roughly 30-hour single-player campaign, according to Kotaku, which means it needs players to finish it rather than keep logging in. The weekend that followed the launch was the first real test.
On the technical side, S-Game shipped a 5 GB day-one patch. In a post on the game’s Steam page, the studio said it had spent a great deal of time refining the rasterised visuals so they hold up with ray tracing off. It also said it had tested the game on mid-range and lower-end PCs and on handhelds. The studio also suggests rolling back from the latest NVIDIA drivers if you hit performance problems, which we covered in more detail in our patch report.
UAE availability
The game is on PS5 and PC, via Steam and the Epic Games Store. At the time of our earlier report, the UAE PlayStation Store listed the Standard Edition at AED 239 and the Digital Deluxe Edition at AED 279, both still as pre-orders. Steam doesn’t count those console players. Pre-launch sentiment around the PS5 release wasn’t uniformly warm either: the State of Play chat filled with “no disc no buy” comments after the dedicated showcase was announced.
Does the 700,000 figure include PS5 players?
No. It’s a Steam concurrent-player count, meaning the number of people playing at the same moment. PlayStation 5 and Epic Games Store players aren’t part of it, and S-Game hasn’t published a combined figure or sales numbers.
Is Phantom Blade Zero Steam’s biggest launch ever?
No. Kotaku ranks it 15th among Steam launches by peak concurrent players. Black Myth: Wukong is second at 2,415,714, behind PUBG.
What should PC players do before launching it?
Let the roughly 5 GB day-one patch finish downloading, and note your current NVIDIA driver version before changing anything. S-Game suggests rolling back from the latest driver if performance is unstable, and our patch report covers the exact versions.
