Stellar Blade Steam Player Count Hits 192k, Crushing Records

South Korean developer Shift Up is taking a massive victory lap, and they have the receipts to back it up. In a recent investor presentation, the studio revealed a chart explicitly comparing its hit action RPG, Stellar Blade, against some of Sony’s most famous first-party titles. The message to the industry is unmistakable: when it comes to PC debuts, this new IP has outperformed PlayStation heavyweights like God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered by a significant margin. Shift Up now claims the title is the "best-selling PlayStation-exclusive launch IP in history" on the PC platform.

A graphic from the presentation, widely circulated by industry observers, highlights a surprising dominance in player numbers that few predicted. Following its release on Valve’s Steam platform in June 2025, Stellar Blade reached an all-time peak of approximately 192,078 concurrent players.

To put that number into perspective, it is almost 2.5 times higher than the previous record holder for a single-player PlayStation port, Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut, which peaked at roughly 77,154 players. 

Other massive franchises trailed even further behind, with 2018’s God of War topping out at about 73,529 players and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered reaching 66,436. Even the prestigious The Last of Us Part I struggled to break the 36,496 concurrent player mark, with Horizon Zero Dawn rounding out the top six but ultimately falling short of Stellar Blade's record-breaking figures. 

A Win for Single-Player Games

It is worth noting that a specific qualifier is necessary here: these records pertain to single-player games. Helldivers 2 still holds a far higher concurrent peak, but that is largely thanks to it being a multiplayer, live-service game designed for group play. However, within the narrative-driven, single-player genre, Stellar Blade has blown the competition out of the water. 

It is a bold move for Shift Up to highlight the success in this specific way. To demonstrate their performance, they essentially had to showcase the comparative "struggles" of other PlayStation ports. Since Shift Up is not a PlayStation-owned studio, they likely feel more comfortable sharing these numbers than a first-party developer would.

Calling the competition's performance "poor" might be an exaggeration, especially since single-player games rarely match the concurrent heights of live-service giants like Arc Raiders. However, the chart proves a crucial point: PC gamers are starving for fresh, action-packed IPs rather than older back-catalog releases.

This player engagement has translated directly into massive financial returns. Industry reports indicate that Stellar Blade sold over 1.1 million copies on Steam within roughly its first week alone, generating more than $56 million in revenue. When combined with earlier PlayStation 5 figures, total global sales for the title are understood to be around 3 million units. 

This is an incredibly impressive feat considering Stellar Blade is a brand-new intellectual property competing against franchises that have had decades to build their fanbases. The shorter window between the console and PC release likely helped maintain the "hype cycle" more effectively than Sony’s traditional strategy of waiting years to port games.

With this validation in hand, Shift Up is already looking toward the future. The studio’s presentation hinted that the rapid success on PC has influenced their strategy for a sequel. 

A recent recruitment post suggests that Stellar Blade 2—which may arrive before 2027—will likely aim for a multi-platform release from day one. Considering how well the original game performed on PC, it won't come as a surprise that Shift Up wants to give fans the sequel as soon as possible, rather than making them wait for an exclusivity period to expire again.