The Outlast Trials Hits a Record 94,507 Steam Players After a 90% Autumn Sale Discount

The Outlast Trials peaked at 94,507 concurrent players on Steam on 4 October 2026, according to Steam's own most-played chart, more than two and a half times the 36,332 it drew at its early access launch in May 2023. No new update caused it: Red Barrels' co-op horror game is 90% off in the Steam Autumn Sale, at $3.99 instead of $39.99 until 8 October.

This piece is built on the Steam store page, Steam's player chart and review counts, Red Barrels' announcements on Steam and SteamCharts' monthly history, all read between 06:30 and 06:45 UTC on 5 October 2026. We have not played the game.

How big is the spike?

Steam's chart for 4 October puts The Outlast Trials at number 26 among all games by daily peak, up from outside the top 100 the week before. The day before, Steam's chart already showed 71,915 players (number 34), so the climb has lasted at least two days. At 06:38 UTC on Monday 5 October, a quiet hour for European and American players, Steam's API still counted 38,487 people in the game.

For scale, SteamCharts' history gives the game an average of 3,591 concurrent players in September 2026 and a September peak of 6,679. The Monday-morning figure alone is about ten times that monthly average.

SteamCharts samples the player count rather than reading Steam's daily rollup, so its own all-time peak reads 94,282, slightly below Steam's figure. Either way, the old record from May 2023 has been beaten by a wide margin.

Why is everyone playing The Outlast Trials now?

The discount is the only thing that changed. Red Barrels' last content drop was the Season 7.1 update on 8 September, which added the Chemical Leak limited-time event and two new MK-Challenges, followed by hotfixes on 11 and 17 September. The developer has posted nothing on Steam since. The store page meanwhile shows the 90% Autumn Sale price, with the offer ending on 8 October.

The community noticed quickly. On 3 October a post in r/OutlastTrials pointing out the game's top-30 chart position passed 350 upvotes, and the subreddit filled with threads from new players, several of them asking whether the game works solo.

Do the new players like it?

Mostly, yes. Across all languages the game has 114,345 Steam reviews and 92% of them are positive, which Steam labels Very Positive; English reviews alone sit at 94% of 54,035. The 100 most recent reviews this morning were 92 positive and 8 negative.

The softer number is the last 30 days: the store page shows 84% positive from 2,454 reviews. That window includes the Season 7.1 update, which also ended mod support and moved options such as a field-of-view slider into the game's own settings. We have not measured how many of those reviews mention the change. Critics were cooler at launch: the game's main Metacritic listing shows a Metascore of 75 from 27 reviews.

What do you get for $3.99?

The Outlast Trials is a first-person stealth horror game set during the Cold War and a prequel to Outlast and Outlast 2. Trials support one to four players in co-op, and the game can be played alone; Steam lists both single-player and online co-op. Add-on packs such as the Reagent Starter Pack are sold separately; the $3.99 price is for the base game.

It launched in early access on PC on 18 May 2023 and arrived on PlayStation and Xbox with the full release on 5 March 2024, but the $3.99 price is a Steam offer: we have not checked console stores. If you are deciding on a cheap horror game this week, our list of the best-reviewed games under $10 in the Autumn Sale covers other options with their Steam scores.

What we don't know yet

Red Barrels has not commented on the record on Steam, and console player numbers are not public, so the total audience is larger than these figures show. The real test comes after 8 October. Big sale spikes often fade once the price goes back up; Deadlock's record last week came from a major update instead, which is a different kind of growth. We will check The Outlast Trials' chart again when the sale ends.