About 12,000 to 13,000 people play Galactic Racer on Steam at a weekday evening peak, one week after launch, and close to 18,000 on a weekend afternoon. Its busiest moment so far was 17,920 at 3:17pm Central on Sunday, October 11, which is 17% above the launch-day high of 15,307. On Tuesday, exactly a week in, it topped out at 12,378.
That is a healthy first week. The first weekend beat launch day, which is the sign we said to watch for, and the drop from launch night to the following Tuesday night is about 15%. Steam can only see PC players, so the real total across PS5 and Xbox is higher by an amount nobody has published.
The first week, day by day
Each day's highest Steam reading, Central time.
| Day | Peak | When |
|---|---|---|
| Tue Oct 6 (launch) | 15,307 | 3pm |
| Wed Oct 7 | 12,486 | 4pm (readings from 4pm only) |
| Thu Oct 8 | no readings | |
| Fri Oct 9 | 13,408 | 4pm |
| Sat Oct 10 | 16,980 | 4pm |
| Sun Oct 11 | 17,920 | 3pm |
| Mon Oct 12 | 14,534* | 3pm |
| Tue Oct 13 | 12,378* | 8pm |
* From SteamCharts' hourly record; our own readings stop at noon on Monday. Where both exist, the two agree to within half a percent.
The overnight floor tells the same story. At 5am on Saturday about 6,750 people were still racing; by 5am on Tuesday it was about 4,600. Overnight numbers fall faster than evening ones after a launch, because the first-week, play-until-3am crowd thins out first.
Launch night against a week later
Same hours, both Tuesdays.
| Hour | Tue Oct 6 | Tue Oct 13* | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3pm | 15,307 | 11,597 | -24% |
| 7pm | 14,084 | 11,755 | -17% |
| 8pm | 14,521 | 12,378 | -15% |
| 9pm | 14,049 | 12,258 | -13% |
The afternoon fell furthest. Launch afternoon was swollen by European players logging on for the release; a normal Tuesday afternoon does not have that. The evening, when North American players are home, held best.
The weekend beat launch day
On launch day we wrote that the number to watch was the first weekend: evenings above launch day would mean word of mouth was working. They came in slightly above, and the afternoons came in well above.
| Launch Tue | Sat Oct 10 | Sun Oct 11 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Afternoon high | 15,307 | 16,980 | 17,920 |
| 7pm | 14,084 | 14,815 | 14,729 |
| 8pm | 14,521 | 14,740 | 14,741 |
Part of that is simply the weekend, when every game is busier. The rest of the Star Wars games we track rose 28% from launch afternoon to Sunday afternoon, from 15,218 combined to 19,542, helped by a Zero Company weekend and a Battlefront II community update. Galactic Racer rose 17% over the same stretch, so it sat a little below everything else combined at the weekend after edging past it on launch day. A new game drawing a crowd that size on its first Sunday is still a good result.
Against Zero Company's first week
Zero Company launched on Thursday, August 27, at a much larger size on Steam. Here is how each held up, measured as a share of its own launch-day high.
| Launch-day high | First weekend high | Day eight high | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zero Company | 68,966 | 75,825 (+10%) | 32,658 (47%) |
| Galactic Racer | 15,307 | 17,920 (+17%) | 12,378* (81%) |
Galactic Racer is the smaller game on PC by a wide margin, but its first week held up far better. Zero Company had lost more than half its launch-day peak by its second Thursday; Galactic Racer still has four fifths of its own. Two cautions: Zero Company is a $50 tactics game, a genre that leans heavily on PC, while Galactic Racer is a $60 racer that also sells on PS5 and Xbox; and a slower fall from a smaller start is easier.
What else changed this week
- Steam reviews: 86% positive across 6,330 reviews as of Tuesday night, up from 77% on launch morning and 81% on day two. The rating is "Very Positive".
- Two hotfixes. The first, on Thursday, October 8, raised the minimum NVIDIA driver on PC and fixed DLSS stability. The second, on Monday, October 12, says only "general stability fixes".
- Still open: party size is three, with six promised and no date, and there is still no key rebinding.
What it means if you are deciding
If you were waiting to see whether Galactic Racer would empty out after launch week, it has not. PC lobbies are busy at every hour you are likely to play, reviews keep improving, and the developers have patched twice in a week. The game is worth buying now if racing roguelikes appeal to you and you can live without rebinding keys and with parties of three. Wait if either of those is a dealbreaker, since neither has a date.
We will keep reading the numbers and will report again at the one-month mark. Everything else we have published on the game is on the Galactic Racer hub.
Earlier: launch-day report, the first two days, first hotfix, is it crossplay?
How we count
- Steam concurrent players from Steam's own public API, read once an hour by our tracker from launch morning to noon on Monday, October 12, with gaps from Wednesday morning to Friday afternoon. Steam only: PS5 and Xbox players are not counted anywhere public.
- Rows marked * come from SteamCharts' hourly record, which began on Friday, October 9. One launch-day reading of zero (5pm, a Steam API glitch) is left out.
- "The rest of Star Wars" is the sum of the other 16 Star Wars games we track on Steam at the same reading.
- Zero Company figures are the highest of our own readings on each day, from August 27 to September 3.
- The review share counts every Steam review, all languages, posted before 9:40pm Central on October 13. Hotfix details come from the developers' Steam announcements.
