Yes, ‘Stellar Blade’ Players Are Leaving the Game on Steam. Sort Of

SHIFT UP’s Stellar Blade dropped on PC on June 11th, setting Steam ablaze with love for Sony’s breakout sci-fi hit from mid-2024. Mods of a more, erm, suggestive variety soon flooded sites like Nexus Mods, implying the game’s community will shepherd a lively (if not thirsty) fanbase for the game for months to come. However, Stellar Blade doesn’t seem to have the same staying power as its launch week sister title, Dune Awakening. Yes, according to SteamDB data from today, Dune Awakening reached a 24-hour peak of approximately 136,000 players. Stellar Blade? Around 93,000.

So, if you were looking for that age-old “no one is playing that new single-player title anymore” article, the one that floods all games journalism websites weeks after a hot new hit’s release? Well, YOU’VE COME TO THE WRONG PLACE. I’m not pulling that nonsense. While, duh, Stellar Blade is not as popular as a live-service multiplayer game, SHIFT UP’s single-player title is actually one of the more successful solo-play games to ever hit Steam. At least in terms of audience retention.

fewer people are playing ‘Stellar Blade’…

According to data sourced from SteamDB, Stellar Blade’s player base is dropping on Steam. The game peaked at 192,078 concurrent players on June 15th, just four days after the game’s release. Not a shock: Players likely sat down over the weekend and started binging the PC version before going back to work the next day. As of this article’s publication, the game reached a concurrent player count peak of 93,593 users today. That means, at its best, the game dropped to approximately 48% of its highest player count. Yes, over half of all Stellar Blade fans seem to have moved on from the game.

Per the overall trajectory of Stellar Blade on SteamDB, we’ll likely continue to see a downward trend for the game. So, technically, it’s true that Stellar Blade is losing its steam. Who would’ve thought?

… But ‘Stellar Blade’ is more popular than most single-player games

Stellar Blade’s success and gaming relevancy shouldn’t be determined by its drop in player count, though. Rather, it should be compared against other single-player games’ overall performance 13 days post-release. By doing so, we see that Stellar Blade‘s retention rate is above average for a single-player title, meaning it’s currently performing quite well.

Just look at SteamDB’s statistics on Hogwarts Legacy. Released on February 10th, this highly controversial take on 19th-century Hogwarts took Steam by storm. The title peaked at 879,308 concurrent players on February 12th. But by February 23rd, the game sat at 275,584 players on Steam. In other words, Avalanche Software only retained 31.34% of its initial user base. Similarly, when Resident Evil 4‘s remake hit Steam on March 24, 2023, the game saw an all-time high of 168,191 players on March 25th, followed by a drop-off to 61,498 by April 6th. Only 36.56% of players were still traipsing through Spain the following month.

Cyberpunk 2077 debuted on December 10th, 2020, peaking at 1,047,602 users three days later. By December 23rd, the game had dropped to 333,086 Steam users. In other words, the game retained only 31.79% of its player base. Not a surprise; Cyberpunk was critically panned at release due to its bugs and underwhelming content, only receiving proper acclaim after years of post-launch support by CD Projekt RED.

How does it compare against the best in PC gaming?

Stellar Blade has maintained 48% of its player count compared to its peak player base number. That means players are far more likely to stick around and 100% the game or mod it in some shape or form. But how does it perform against some of the top single-player titles ever released on Steam? Quite well, actually.

Elden Ring launched on February 24th, 2022, and peaked on March 5th at 953,426 players. By March 9th, 13 days after release, the game had 738,122 concurrent users max, or 77.41% of its peak post-release player base. Elden Ring saw an extremely slow drop-off; the game only reached consistent peaks below 250,000 players by late April. While impressive, the most popular single-player games tend to hover around a 50% drop-off two weeks later. Elden Ring is the exception, and a pretty incredible one at that.

The Steam single-player title with the highest all-time peak on Steam, Black Myth: Wukong, dropped on August 20th. The title peaked on August 22nd with approximately 2.4 million players, then by September 2nd, the game slowed to around 1.2 million players. In total, 53.54% of players stuck with the game. And remember Bethesda’s Starfield? That game’s official release date was September 6th, 2023. The studio’s open-world sci-fi romp peaked at 330,723 players on Steam on September 10th, then lowered to 165,398 by September 19th. Yes, half of all Starfield players stuck around, almost to a T.

In other words, Stellar Blade is up there with some of the most popular single-player games in terms of audience retention. So, be wary of games journalism headlines saying “Stellar Blade is losing popularity.” This is one game that’s demonstrated its cultural relevancy in the AAA market, again and again. Steam players just aren’t ready to leave Eve behind. Not quite yet.