God of War Ragnarok's Steam launch is surprisingly poor compared to other Sony first-party exclusives on PC

The PC version of God of War Ragnarok has officially arrived on PC. The game launched Thursday, September 19 on Steam, as well as the Epic Games Store. Ragnarok is the latest Sony first-party PlayStation title to make it to PC, but it doesn’t look like the audience showed up for this one.

The game’s Steam numbers have been rising since Thursday, but its peak concurrent on Valve’s platform has plateaued without reaching the heights achieved by the original God of War.

As of the most recent count, God of War Ragnarok has achieved a peak concurrent of 35,615 players (via SteamDB), which isn’t a small figure by most accounts, but definitely makes it sit towards the lower end of Sony’s PC catalogue.

This peak concurrent is higher than last week’s other major release, Final Fantasy 16, but it’s well below the original God of War’s 73,529. In fact, that game held the record for the highest peak concurrent among Sony’s single-player games right up until Ghost of Tsushima came and snatched that title with its 77,154 peak concurrent. Tsushima was the first game to be released after Sony rolled out its misguided game blocking due to requiring a PlayStation Network account, which meant that the game was unavailable in around 180 countries.

That requirement hasn’t changed much, so it’s possible that a chunk of God of War’s audience simply wasn’t able to buy Ragnarok due to it being unavailable where they live. Regardless, Ragnarok’s numbers are surprising, especially given how much acclaim the PlayStation version received, and it being the conclusion of the story.

Steam reviews aren’t entirely glowing, either, and most complain about the PSN account requirement, while others lament the inconsistent performance deeper into the game compared to its opening hours. It’s possible the numbers are going to get another bump over the course of the week, or when Sony rolls back the PSN requirement (or lessens it).