Last week, it was a new Bandai Namco game that held off Gears of War: E-Day and EA Sports FC 27 as the #1 best-selling game on Steam for the week. Before that, it was Wardogs dominance. This week — or this past week from October 6 to October 13, to be more precise — the Bandai Namco game has been dethroned, but not by its biggest challengers to the throne the previous week, but by a new release. A new Star Wars release, which also happens to be one of the best games so far this year.
For the week of October 6 to October 13, the top five consisted of Arc Raiders in the #5 spot, which surged up the charts 61 spots week-on-week. This is no doubt thanks to the Frozen Trail update, its hefty discount, and free-to-play promotion. Similarly, Risk of Rain 2 entered the charts after a long absence, into the #4 spot, thanks to the long-awaited Hallowed Concepts DLC releasing. Gears of War: E-Day took the third spot, up one slot from the previous week. Its launch was notably divided into two parts: early access and full launch. The latter appears to have been a little stronger than the former. Meanwhile, in the #2 spot for the second consecutive week is EA Sports FC 27. In the #1 spot, up 30 slots from its previous pre-orders ranking, was Star Wars: Galactic Racer.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer — which is actually free for millions right now — is a high-speed arcade racer heavily inspired by Star Wars Episode I: Racer, but it also has some Burnout in it as well. And it’s pretty great, or at least this is what its 88 on Metacritic suggests, a score that lands it as the highest-rated Star Wars game for a very long time.
Per SteamDB, the new Star Wars game only peaked at 18,062 concurrent users, which isn’t the biggest launch ever. This tells us two things. One, it’s not hanging onto this number one spot and will almost certainly lose it to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 pre-orders. The other is that Gears of War: E-Day really did not have a very good launch on Steam.
As for the game itself, for those unfamiliar with it, it’s from developer Fuse Games and publisher Secret Mode. It’s a debut for the former, which was founded in 2023 by former Criterion Games developers. Criterion Games is the studio responsible for the Need for Speed series. In the game, the Empire’s grip on the galaxy has weakened, giving way to lawless behavior, including unsanctioned racing. Specifically, the Galactic League, where syndicates sponsor pilots in pursuit of fortunes and glory. Not only does the money make it high stakes, but pilots are putting their lives on the line. The game features both a single-player campaign as well as online multiplayer.
