Doom: The Dark Ages has officially launched worldwide. Well, it technically launched earlier last week for those who opted for its $100 Premium Edition, but most players had to wait until Thursday, May 15 to jump in.
That is the launch date on Game Pass, Xbox, and PlayStation. It’s also the day the game launched on Steam, where it doesn’t appear to have made as big of an impact as its predecessors.
Doom: The Dark Ages has been pretty well-received by critics. Our very own Dom Peppiatt praised how tight its gameplay remains, but admitted it doesn’t break any new ground in his review.
The game’s own Steam player reviews currently sit at an overall Very Positive rating, too. This is, by most accounts, a pretty good game. If you tend to pay attention to these things, however, you’ll notice that the number of reviews is under 10,000, which typically correlates to the number of players.
This is especially true at launch, as The Dark Ages appears to have had a far muted one compared to Doom Eternal, and the Doom 2016 reboot to a lesser degree. The Steam players numbers started off pretty low, but we assumed they would get a boost over the weekend. Unfortunately, that did not happen.
At the time of writing, The Dark Ages achieved a peak concurrent of just 31,470 players (via SteamDB), which is well below Doom Eternal’s 104,891 players, and even Doom 2016’s 44,271. In fact, it’s clear Eternal had more players than 2016 and The Dark Ages combined at launch, which is particularly interesting considering it remains the most divisive.
Obviously, Steam’s player counts do not take into account player activity elsewhere on PC – such as Game Pass, and the Microsoft Store. They also tell us nothing about how well (or not well) the launch has been on PlayStation or Xbox. It could be that player numbers are comparable to past entries, they’re just scattered across platforms differently this time, and in ways we can’t report on.
That said, based on Steam’s figures alone, at least, this does not paint a particularly flattering picture of the game’s sales. If you are enjoying the game nonetheless, you may want to check if you’ve missed any secrets across the game’s various chapters.
Our walkthroughs for Village of Khalim, Hebeth, Sentinel Barracks, Holy City of Aratum, and Siege will help you do just that. You’ll also find so much more helpful information in our mega Doom: The Dark Ages guide.
