Bethesda has announced that over 3 million players have played Doom: The Dark Ages, the latest entry to Id Software’s legendary shooter series.
Remarkably, the announcement states that The Dark Ages reached that number faster than 2019’s Doom Eternal did. Seven times faster.
Back at launch last week, Doom: The Dark Ages didn’t seem to be tracking on Steam as much, with lower concurrent player numbers compared to previous modern Doom games, including Doom (2016).
But as it turns out, it’s likely more folks play Doom: The Dark Ages via Game Pass. This is the first Doom game during this new era where publisher Bethesda is under Microsoft and as such, their games now launch day-1 on the game subscription service available on Xbox, PC and cloud streaming.
The “players” instead of a “copies sold” in the announcement reflects that, not all 3 million players bought the game outright, and only Steam of the many digital games distributor provides public data of player counts and concurrent numbers.
Doom: The Dark Ages is a prequel to the previous two Doom games where we see the Doom Slayer wage war against the forces of Hell in a medieval, sci-fi setting. Doom Slayer has a shield, a core part of his moveset, which brings tremendous change to the combat philosophy from previous entries.
Check out our review of Doom: The Dark Ages here.
Doom: The Dark Ages is out now on PS5, PC and Xbox Series X|S. The game is also available as part of Game Pass subscription.