Splitgate, Back 4 Blood rank in top 10 on Steam over the weekend

A crusher Ridden zombie from Back 4 Blood. One of its arms is a huge mass of twined muscle strands. It is looking over its shoulder at the viewer, the background is a dark evergreen forest.

(Image credit: Turtle Rock)

Shooters dominated the newcomers' places on the Steam charts this weekend, with free to play Splitgate and the paid beta of Back 4 Blood both taking spots in the top 10 games.

It's a pretty predictable outcome for Turtle Rock's highly anticipated Back 4 Blood, which many see as the successor to the Left 4 Dead games. It might surprise you if you haven't seen Splitgate's recent rise in popularity—or even heard of the previously niche shooter at all.

The free-to-play Splitgate is a competitive shooter with the big hook of portal movement, allowing you to appear behind enemies and traverse environments quickly. Splitgate also set an all-time record for peak players today with nearly 68,000 concurrent players, a far and away record for the two year old game that has seen a meteoric rise in popularity over the last month. Prior to this July, Splitgate's record for concurrent players was 11,000—still a healthy number, but nothing like the number playing it now.

Pre-order customers for Turtle Rock's Back 4 Blood can currently access its beta, and the co-op zombie shootin game had a peak of nearly 100,000 players on Friday the 6th. It has maintained 30 to 90 thousand players all weekend.

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Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.