Highlights
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Stellar Blade hit 183K+ peak players on Steam in 24 hours—the highest for any Sony single-player title.
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Originally released on PS5 in April 2024, it crossed 1M sales by June and holds strong critic scores.
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Steam reviews are 95% “Overwhelmingly Positive,” reflecting strong PC player reception post-launch.
Sony Interactive Entertainment's 'Stellar Blade' reached more than 183,000 concurrent players on Steam within 24 hours of its PC launch on June 11, making it the highest single-player peak for a Sony-published game on the platform, according to Steam tracking data.
The game initially launched on PlayStation consoles in April 2024. The game sold more than 1 million copies by June 2024, according to Sony Interactive Entertainment. It achieved both commercial and critical success and holds an average top critic score of 82 and a player rating of 90 on review aggregation website OpenCritic. On Steam, the game has achieved an “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating of 95% with over 7,600 reviews.
The PC version of Stellar Blade has some new upscaling features like Nvidia's DLSS 4 and AMD FSR 3, which enable it to run smoothly on a wide range of hardware. It also has higher quality textures, ultrawide monitor support, and native support for Sony’s DualSense controllers.
The only Sony-published game that surpassed Stellar Blade’s average concurrent player count on Steam is the multiplayer title Helldivers 2. The game, developed by Arrowhead Studios, became an overnight success with a peak of over 458,000 players. As of June 12, 2025, Stellar Blade is the top-selling game on Steam, and it is sitting above the likes of Counter-Strike 2, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and Dune: Awakening.
Stellar Blade was Shift Up’s first entry in the AAA gaming space. The studio previously released NIKKE: Goddess of Victory, a mobile gacha game with over 45 million downloads worldwide. Shift Up celebrated its success on Steam on social media platforms by saying, “With your incredible support, we have reached the No.1 spot on Steam’s Global Top Sellers.”
Shift Up’s successful launch arrives despite Sony’s controversial region lock. Multiple Sony-published games are not available in 132 countries since May 6, 2024, after Sony made an official announcement. This is because Sony restricts access to its PC ports in countries where the PlayStation Network (PSN) is not supported.
Sony has faced criticism for its actions, as many of the restricted games are purely single-player and do not require online connectivity. Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Studios managed to get the PSN login requirement removed from its game following criticism and review bombing. It is unknown if Shift Up will follow suit and strike a similar deal to reach out to a wider audience on PC.
