The first leg of Gears of War: E-Day's beta has only just clawed its way out of the ground, and it's putting up some strong Steam numbers already.
The Gears of War: E-Day open beta's first portion runs from August 6 (yesterday) to August 10 on Xbox Series X|S consoles and PC, and it seems to be doing quite well right out of the gate.
According to SteamDB, the beta managed to get 14,331 players chainsaw-gunning and wall-hopping at the same time, and we haven't even reached its first weekend where multiplayer games usually balloon.
Mind you, that's already the best Steam concurrent player peak the series has ever seen. Last year's re-remastered Gears of War Reloaded reached just under 5,000 concurrent Steam players, strategy gem Gears Tactics hoarded 7,351 players together, and the previous record holder Gears 5 peaked with a little over 10,000 people.
It's also worth noting that the Gears of War: E-Day beta is currently in early access, meaning it's only available to players who have pre-ordered the game or Game Pass Ultimate subscribers (who wouldn't have access to the Steam version, anyway). Putting up the series' best numbers before the general public's had a chance to shotgun chunks of meat off subterranean alien bugs is a very good sign for the prequel's prospects.
The full E-Day open beta goes live for everyone from August 13 to August 17. Both betas let folks try out Gears of War's PvP Versus mode and its sprawling 12-player Horde mode that throws waves of increasingly bloodthirsty enemies into wide open maps.
Gears of War: E-Day comes out in full on October 6 on Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Game Pass Ultimate.
