On October 16, 2025, a new sandbox MMORPG called Pax Dei was released on Steam, Epic Games, GeForce Now, and in the Game Pass. Now the developers reveal how many players were active in the launch week.
How many players are playing Pax Dei? We previously reported that Pax Dei significantly increased its player count on Steam at launch compared to the previous months – from around 400 players during prime time to regularly over 5,500, peaking at even 6,500 simultaneous active Steam users.
But how many players overall accompanied the MMORPG at launch? After all, Pax Dei is playable on Steam, Epic Games, GeForce Now, and – for the very first time – Microsoft’s PC Game Pass. This is exactly what the developers revealed on their official Discord channel.
In the few days so far, the response has been incredible. We welcomed the PC Game Pass community, which joined the players on Steam, Epic, and GeForce Now on the newly opened shards.
In the past week, we have seen over 90,000 active players enter Gallia across all platforms, forming clans, building houses and villages, and creating hours of adventures together. Every story, every creation, every encounter brings the world to life and reminds us why we created it in the first place.
The release trailer for Pax Dei:
Unique MMORPG for a small niche
How does Pax Dei compare? More than 90,000 players is not a bad number. Especially considering that the previous all-time high of simultaneous active Steam users was only 11,531 (source: steamdb.info) … and this peak was 16 months ago, still from the Early Access launch.
However, the number also shows that Pax Dei, with its special focus on crafting, resource gathering, and social medieval experience, targets a rather small audience. The subscription model, which is optional but mandatory for properties, further exacerbates the niche existence.
It will be interesting to see how player numbers develop as the first fees come due in the coming months. Here are some statistics from other MMORPG launches over the past few years:
- Throne and Liberty had 4,527,940 players in the first launch month.
- Lost Ark celebrated over 1.3 million simultaneous active Steam users at launch. Overall, the MMORPG has over 20 million players worldwide.
- Amazon Games did not release sales numbers for New World, but it is said that a strong 913,634 Steam users were simultaneously in Aeternum at launch. Currently, there are regularly over 40,000.
What does the community say about the number? The MMORPG community is currently discussing the developers’ post from Pax Dei. Particularly interesting is the report from FFIVCherry on Reddit, who plays Pax Dei with his family, specifically through PC Game Pass. The small group has treated themselves to access for 4 properties and had quite a bit of fun building and farming together in the beginning.
However, there is already a sense of fatigue and frustration growing in the small family because crafting is increasingly characterized by long wait times, a low number of resource sources, and failures during the crafting process. It is therefore becoming apparent that they will not renew the subscription and will stop playing Pax Dei.
Many other players are also unconvinced or even doubt the numbers after a trial run.
- Alarm-Particular speculates on Reddit: “I don’t want to say it’s not true, but I personally find it hard to believe. It’s a new MMO and hasn’t even made it into the top 20 of MMOs on Steam.”
- Lamlorde writes on Reddit: “I gave it a try. Didn’t like it, uninstalled it again, but technically, I count in this statistic as well. So I can easily imagine that you could reach 90,000 like that.”
- squidgod2000 explains on Reddit: “From what I’ve seen in the game, at least 80%+ of those 90,000 players are from the PC Game Pass, which will not be reflected in the Steam numbers. I suspect this is a good method to gain visibility for the game, but the retention of these players is probably much lower than that of people who paid directly for the game.”
Our MMORPG expert Karsten Scholz can relate to the lack of enthusiasm. Pax Dei has its strengths but also several weaknesses and an unusual focus, making the game play differently than many other MMORPGs. You can read his experiences with the release version here: I played 3 big and current games this weekend, with the non-MMORPG being the most fun
