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Phantom Blade Zero hasn’t even fully released yet, and it’s breaking records over on Steam, with a frankly absurd amount of players playing it as we speak.
The highly anticipated title from S-Game, a Chinese development studio with previous titles like Phantom Blade: Executioners, NextNight and Mad Crown, is almost upon us. Following Soul, an assassin at the top of his craft, as he tries to uncover who has killed the Matriach of The Orders.
This is the group he worked for, and now he’s being framed for a murder he didn’t commit. To make things worse, he has just 66 days to uncover who’s framed him, murdered his Matriarch, and get to the bottomn of the mystery before he dies of his wounds.
The developers have been very adamant it’s an action adventure game, and not a Soulslike, and it looks like the combination of action adventure mechanics and Wuxia-like storytelling is attracting the players, as, at the time of writing, over 600,000 players are currently playing Phantom Blade Zero on Steam alone. That’s not accounting for the console players, and with the weekend looming, that number is only likely to increase in massive fashion.
UPDATE: The concurrent number as of 13:50pm GMT is now over 718,000.
It’s already the highest played game on an opening day, with the biggest concurrent player count for a new title of 2026, so seeing where it’ll stop is the question at this point. With it being almost a cultural event in China, it has had huge marketing pushes in the mainland, and is seen by many as the next gaming step after Black Myth: Wukong.
Will it hit over one million concurrent players over the weekend? It’s likely, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Phantom Blade Zero releases today on PlayStation 5 and PC.
For your next read, don’t miss our guide on completing the Counterfeit chapter in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ, or the reveal around GTA 6’s install size.
Luke Addison is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Thumb Wars. Having previously been a part of multiple outlets over the years, including building an entire gaming team from nothing to something, he thought it best to forge his own path and answer only to himself. As likely to be found playing the latest game as he is in the kitchen relaxing (by cooking), he always brings the same bold and brash attitude to everything he does, with a heavy leaning on sarcasm and dry wit!
