From Software is best known for its Dark Souls series, but it decided to branch out with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and it seems like that risk has paid off. PCGamesN reported today that the game has had the biggest Steam launch of the year so far.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice trades the medieval fantasy theme of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls for an adventure in feudal Japan. (Or at least a version of feudal Japan that featured mechanical arms, magic, and terrifying creatures.) It also set itself apart from, uh, From Software’s previous titles with a much faster pace.
Dark Souls is perhaps most well known for being a difficult series. Many people enjoy the games mostly because they allow someone to go from “how the hell am I supposed to beat this?” to “I might play through Dark Souls III with some bananas.” Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice keeps that sense of hard-earned mastery.
It turns out that many people like that proposition. Steam Charts data shows that more than 100,000 copies of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice were sold on Valve’s marketplace in the 24 hours after its release. The game also had a peak player count of 125,315 people, which bests every single-player title but Grand Theft Auto V.
Multiplayer games like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive had many more concurrent players. But for a single-player title, the numbers put up by Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice are impressive, especially since the game is truly single-player instead of being a hybrid of single- and multi-player like GTA 5.
PCGamesN said this launch also makes Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice the third-largest Japanese game after Monster Hunter World and Dark Souls III. It’s clear that PC gamers trust From Software–and that the developer won’t be confined to Dark Souls just because they became the reference point for difficult games.