The Dark Ages’ Low Steam Player Count Isn’t Cause for Concern

Doom: The Dark Ages, the newest addition to id Software’s long-running Doom series, was released on PC and current-gen consoles last week, and so far, it’s received fairly positive reviews. Although some players think it isn’t as good as Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, the game’s overall critic scores are on par with those of its predecessors. On Steam, Doom: The Dark Ages has earned an 86% positive user rating, while on sites like OpenCritic, it has obtained an equally commendable 86% Top Critic Average. Doom: The Dark Ages probably isn’t going to win many Game of the Year awards, but it seems to have lived up to most fans’ expectations.

Despite Doom: The Dark Ages‘ critical success, the game’s commercial performance has been brought into question by fans. On launch day, the game only had around 30,000 concurrent players on Steam, which was far less than the player counts of the last two installments in the modern Doom trilogy. To put this into numbers, Doom (2016) had an all-time peak of 44,000 players on the same storefront, while Doom Eternal had more than 100,000 players. Although some pundits are taking these low player counts as a sign that Doom: The Dark Ages isn’t selling well, this may not be the case.

Doom: The Dark Ages Sets a High Bar For Future Entries

Doom: The Dark Ages brings a long list of changes to the series, leaving the next game with the difficult task of going even bigger.

Many Factors Have Likely Contributed to Doom: The Dark Ages’ Muted PC Launch

Despite Its Low Player Count on PC, Doom: TDA Seems to Be Doing Well on Consoles

While Steam player counts can provide a general idea of how popular a game is, they often don’t tell the whole story. In the case of multi-platform games like Doom: The Dark Ages, for example, they don’t take console users into account. Doom: The Dark Ages is available on both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S and, in the U.S. at least, it’s among the top 10 most played games on the two platforms. Even though Sony and Microsoft don’t provide official player counts for games on their consoles, this is still an achievement worth highlighting.

Since Doom: TDA is an Expensive Game, Some PC Gamers May Have Opted to Play It on Game Pass

Consoles aside, however, there are probably a few factors that influenced Doom: The Dark Ages‘ commercial performance on PC. One of these is the fact that the game is available on PC Game Pass. Since it’s a Microsoft first-party title, Doom: The Dark Ages was released onto the service on day one, unlike any of the modern Doom games before it. Because of this, some PC gamers may have opted to play the game on Game Pass instead of buying it on Steam.

Even though they were also released on Game Pass, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had far more concurrent players on Steam than Doom: The Dark Ages. It’s possible that people were too occupied with these two games to give Doom a shot.

It’s worth noting that Doom: The Dark Ages is a considerably more expensive game than both Doom Eternal and Doom (2016). Unlike its predecessors, which cost $60 worldwide, the game is $70 in the United States. However, in some countries, it has an even higher price tag attached to it. In the United Kingdom, for instance, Doom: The Dark Ages costs ₤70, or roughly $93 when converted to USD. For comparison, Doom Eternal cost only ₤50 in the U.K. at launch, which was much lower than Doom: The Dark Ages‘s price, even when accounting for inflation.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Gave Doom Eternal a Massive Boost

Doom: The Dark Ages‘ player count on Steam could have been higher if it were not for these factors, but the game likely wouldn’t have been able to match Doom Eternal‘s level of popularity regardless. Doom Eternal, as many may know by now, was released in 2020, right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since everyone was stuck at home at the time, most video games sold far better than they typically would’ve under normal circumstances. This is probably part of the reason why Doom Eternal had more than twice the number of Steam players at launch compared to Doom: The Dark Ages, meaning that the current game’s player count shouldn’t be taken at face value.