Neither Forza Horizon 6 Nor Resident Evil Requiem: Phantom Blade Zero Is Steam’s Biggest Launch of 2026, and It Has Already Sold Millions of Copies on Consoles and PC

Putting the controversies aside, there’s no doubt that 2026 has been an exceptional year for video game releases. Even as the year approaches its final stretch, we’ve seen several major launches capture the community’s attention. One of them is Phantom Blade Zero.

The action game, inspired by the fantasy works of the Wuxia genre, arrived in stores in late October and received an excellent response from critics and fans alike. In fact, it has become one of the most successful releases of 2026 so far.

Phantom Blade Zero Is a Hit on Steam and Has Already Sold Millions of Copies

The title developed by S-Game currently holds an average score of 88 on Metacritic, based on more than 40 reviews. While it isn’t the highest-rated release of the year, it has already become the highest-rated video game from China in the country’s history.

Fortunately, the positive reception has also translated into impressive sales. Phantom Blade Zero launched on October 29, 2026, and reached a peak of more than 700,000 concurrent users on Steam. However, as we mentioned earlier, those numbers were expected to climb over the weekend.

And that’s exactly what happened. The game starring Soul broke its record with 833,921 concurrent players on the PC platform during the afternoon of Sunday, November 1, 2026. Although it’s already Monday, the game continues to enjoy a very loyal player base, with nearly 600,000 people currently online on Valve’s platform.

This is an impressive achievement that made Phantom Blade Zero the biggest Steam launch of 2026 so far, easily surpassing major releases such as Wardogs (428,666), Resident Evil Requiem (344,214), Forza Horizon 6 (302,645), The Blood of Dawnwalker (78,188), and Gears of War: E-Day (31,517).

S-Game’s project currently ranks third among Steam’s most-played games, behind only Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2. Despite being a single-player experience, it has more concurrent players than PUBG: Battlegrounds, AION 2, Deadlock, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, and Rust.

Phantom Blade Zero Sold Millions of Copies in 3 Days

Steam’s figures give us a pretty clear picture of how well this action game performed at launch, but they’re only part of the story. It’s worth remembering that Phantom Blade Zero is also available on PlayStation 5 as a console exclusive.

Over the weekend, S-Game announced in a brief statement that its latest game had sold more than 4 million copies in just 72 hours, or 3 days.

“Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for all the love and support!” the studio wrote in its official statement.

That figure includes copies sold through Steam and PS5, as well as WeGame, a PC platform exclusive to China. The game’s commercial success isn’t entirely surprising, as analyst Rhys Elliott from Alinea Analytics previously reported that it had sold 1 million copies during its pre-order period.

Even so, Phantom Blade Zero still falls short of one of the most successful Chinese game launches of the decade: Black Myth: Wukong, which sold 10 million copies in just 3 days. The game is currently believed to have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.

Game Science’s project also holds the record for the most successful single-player game launch in Steam history, with a peak of more than 2 million concurrent users.

But tell us: have you tried S-Game’s game yet? Do you think it deserves its success? Let us know in the comments.