Both Stellar Blade and Dune: Awakening shot into Steam's top 100 with new concurrent player peaks yesterday

Stellar Blade
(Image credit: Shift Up Corporation)

The sexiest game out there broke a new concurrent player record over the weekend. That's right—Dune: Awakening broached the top 100 most-played games of all time on Steam, netting a peak concurrent player count of 189,333 players online on Sunday. That puts it at a happy 85 on SteamDB's chart of most-played games, sandwiched between Football Manager 2020 (84) and the Enhanced Edition of GTA 5 (86).

Just edging it out, though, was Shift Up's character action game Stellar Blade at position 81, between Total War: Three Kingdoms (80) and A Story About My Uncle (82), which are all pretty much the same game.

Even though our Mollie Taylor came away a tad mixed on the game in her Stellar Blade review, it's gone over pretty well with Steam users. 192,078 of them poured into the game on Sunday, while the game itself has a 94% Very Positive rating over in the Steam user reviews. I reckon it's thanks to the smut mods.

I, of course, predicted the Dune half of this in a story last week about the game hitting 142k players on its first proper launch day. Am I some kind of seer? Or perhaps a genius? Yes, but also pretty much everyone anticipated this. Last weekend was both Dune and Stellar Blade's first one after their respective releases, so it only makes sense that a bunch of people fired them up while hanging out at home on a day off.

It's not Stellar Blade's only win these last few days. Earlier today, Shift Up took to social media to thank fans for 3 million copies sold, and it continues to hold strong at sixth place in Steam's own top sellers list. Dune: Awakening, meanwhile, is at number one. Presumably Dune's denizens (dunezens) are enjoying themselves as much as PCG's Chris Livingston in his Dune: Awakening review-in-progress.

Dune: Awakening trainer locationsDune: Awakening starting tipsDune: Awakening fast-travelDune: Awakening research menuDune: Awakening classesDune: Awakening repair

Dune: Awakening trainer locations: Learn new skills
Dune: Awakening starting tips: Conquer Arrakis
Dune: Awakening fast-travel: Take a ride
Dune: Awakening research menu: Locked or unlocked?
Dune: Awakening classes: Which should you pick?
Dune: Awakening repair: How to fix your kit

Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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