Gears of War: E-Day Has Already Broken the Series’ Steam Record Ahead of the Wider Beta

The early-access test reached 14,331 concurrent players on Steam before the broader beta window begins on August 13.

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Gears of War: E-Day has already set a new Steam peak for the franchise, and the test is not open to everyone yet. The game’s early-access beta began on August 6 and will continue through August 10 on Xbox Series X|S and PC.

SteamDB recorded a 14,331-player peak for the beta. That total arrived before the test reached its first weekend, giving E-Day a strong start while access remains limited.

E-Day is ahead of every previous Gears game on Steam

The new beta has moved past the series’ previous Steam leaders by a wide margin. Gears of War Reloaded peaked below 5,000 players, while Gears Tactics reached 7,351. Gears 5 had held the prior franchise record at a little over 10,000 concurrent players.

The audience is still restricted to people who pre-ordered the game or subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate. Since Game Pass Ultimate does not provide the Steam version, E-Day’s Steam numbers are coming from preorder customers on that storefront. The early-access window remains active until August 10.

The wider beta begins August 13

The full open beta will run from August 13 through August 17, giving the broader player base its chance to join. Both beta windows include the PvP Versus mode and Horde: Siege, a 12-player mode where teams fight through waves of increasingly dangerous enemies across large maps.

Gears of War: E-Day will launch on October 6 for Xbox Series X|S and PC, with the full game also available through Game Pass Ultimate. For now, its early Steam performance has already put it well ahead of every previous Gears release on the platform.

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Experience the brutal horror of Emergence Day through the eyes of Marcus Fenix in the origin story of one of gaming's most acclaimed sagas.
Fourteen years before Gears of War, war heroes Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago return home to face a new nightmare: the Locust Horde. These subterranean monsters, grotesque and relentless, erupt from below, laying siege on humanity itself.
Built from the ground up with Unreal Engine 5, Gears of War: E-Day delivers unprecedented graphical fidelity.