Gears of War: E-Day Launch Week: Record Steam Numbers, PC Crashes and Still Mostly Positive

A couple of days ago we covered the Steam review backlash hitting Gears of War: E-Day. Now that the full launch has landed (6 October, after Premium Early Access opened on 1 October, and day one on Game Pass), here’s how release week is actually going.

The numbers

On Steam, E-Day is already the biggest Gears launch ever, and it isn’t close:

• 20,374 players on its first day of Premium Early Access, roughly double the old series record.
• 31,517 players at peak after the full launch, according to SteamDB figures reported by several outlets. That’s around three times Gears 5’s all-time Steam high of 10,196, and well above the free multiplayer beta’s 22,084.
• Still about 28,300 playing at 3pm NZ time on Thursday 8 October (via Steam’s live player count), so it’s holding up well beyond launch day.
• It reportedly topped the Steam sales chart on release day.

Not everyone’s impressed. TechPowerUp called the peak “somewhat underwhelming” given months of hype. But this is Steam only. E-Day launched day one on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, and anyone playing on Xbox Series X|S or through the Xbox app on PC doesn’t show up in SteamDB. Launching mid-week doesn’t help either, so the weekend numbers will tell the real story.

Reviews: still Mostly Positive

As of 8 October, E-Day is sitting at 75% positive across about 5,450 Steam reviews (Mostly Positive), basically where it was during the backlash. Critics remain keener, with 87 on Metacritic for Xbox Series X|S and 82 on PC.

What players are complaining about now

The culture-war reviews haven’t gone anywhere, but more of the negative reviews now come down to the game itself:

• PC crashes. Plenty of reports of crashes on launch and at the first campaign cutscene.
• The marketing. Some long-time fans feel the campaign doesn’t give Marcus and Dom the spotlight the trailers suggested.
• Missing multiplayer features. Still no private matches or custom lobbies, and still no meat shield.

Patches and crash fixes

The Coalition pushed a patch on 5 October, the day before full launch, covering stability, online services, campaign missions and competitive modes. It also fixed a split-screen player getting signed out after suspending and resuming the game, and an Xbox sign-in failure when the system clock is off. There’s been no fix yet for private matches.

Crashing on PC? Start with the basics:

• Update your graphics driver. The Coalition warned during the beta that older drivers can stop the game launching at all.
• Check the requirements. E-Day requires a ray tracing capable GPU (minimum RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600), 12 GB of RAM, Windows 10 22H2 and 115 GB of space on an SSD. Older GTX cards aren’t supported.

Our take

A Gears game tripling the series’ best Steam peak while also being on Game Pass on day one is a good launch, whatever the headlines say. The bigger risk is the basics: fix the PC crashes, and get private matches and the meat shield in before the multiplayer crowd drifts off. We’ll check back on the player numbers after the weekend. Playing on PC or Xbox? Let us know how it’s running in the comments, or squad up on the Discord.

Sources: TechPowerUp, Insider Gaming, Notebookcheck, Game Rant, WindowsForum (patch notes), SteamDB, Steam.