Phantom Blade Zero is off to a massive start on Steam. S-GAME’s kungfupunk action RPG launched on October 29 for PC and PlayStation 5, and according to our own tracker, the Phantom Blade Zero player count peaked at 723,876 concurrent players on Steam on launch day. That figure only covers Steam, so PS5 players come on top of it.
Phantom Blade Zero player count on launch day
Our tracker recorded close to 350,000 players in the first hours after launch. The count passed 430,000 early in the morning European time, dipped slightly to around 400,000, then took off again as more players logged in. It broke 500,000 before midday CET, passed 700,000 in the early afternoon and hit its peak of 723,876 at around 15:00 CET. The numbers then eased off as evening set in across China, where most of the game’s early buyers are.
Around midday, when it passed 579,000 players, Phantom Blade Zero was the second most played game on Steam, behind only Counter-Strike 2 (around 860,000 players at the same time) and ahead of Dota 2 (around 529,000). It also went straight to number one on Steam’s global top sellers chart on launch day.
How Phantom Blade Zero compares to other big Steam launches
Phantom Blade Zero has already passed some recent big action releases, but it still has a way to go to catch the biggest launches on the platform. Here are the all-time Steam peaks from our tracker:
| Game | All-time Steam peak |
|---|---|
| Black Myth: Wukong | 2,415,714 |
| Monster Hunter Wilds | 1,384,608 |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 1,054,388 |
| Elden Ring | 952,523 |
| Phantom Blade Zero | 723,876 (launch day) |
| Crimson Desert | 276,261 |
The most natural comparison is Black Myth: Wukong, another Chinese action RPG built on Unreal Engine 5. Wukong peaked at more than 2.4 million players in 2024, so Phantom Blade Zero reached roughly 30% of that on day one. It has, however, already more than doubled the peak of Crimson Desert.
Strong reviews and pre-orders
The launch comes with strong critic scores, with Phantom Blade Zero sitting at 88 on Metacritic and 90 on OpenCritic. Interest was high before release too. The game passed 3 million wishlists across platforms, and analytics firm Alinea Analytics estimated around 850,000 pre-sold copies, with Steam making up nearly three quarters of them.
What is Phantom Blade Zero?
Phantom Blade Zero is a single-player action RPG from Beijing-based studio S-GAME. You play as Soul, an elite assassin framed for the murder of his master, who has only 66 days left to live. The game is set in the Phantom World, a dark take on ancient China that mixes wuxia martial arts with steampunk and occult elements, a style the studio calls “kungfupunk”.
The game was first revealed at the PlayStation Showcase in May 2023. It was originally due on September 9, 2026, but S-GAME pushed it back to October 29 to give the team more time to polish it. It is out now on PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store, and on PS5.
You can follow the Phantom Blade Zero player count live on our Steam Charts page, which updates throughout the day, or check what else is trending in our Steam player count tracker.
