Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel Sets New Records With Over 255,207 Concurrent Players on Steam

Image Credit: Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel game has a considerably larger player base than any other card game on Steam.

Although it's clear that Yu-Gi-Oh! as a series attracts a lot of attention from around the world, it's still amazing to see it outperform its established competitors so far. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel has nearly doubled the number of concurrent players as the runner-up, Prismata, and nearly tripled the number of concurrent players as Valve's own Artifact Classic.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel was released on Steam just a few days ago, on January 19th, and has already totally dominated the card game niche. With over 255,207 continuous players on PC alone, it has already achieved levels of popularity on Valve's gaming platform that are well above anything a card game has ever attained.

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Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel set a new record for concurrent players three days after its first release, according to Steamcharts, which maintains track of all player base information on Steam. The total number of players at the all-time high was 241,038. This compares favorably to games like Artifact Classic and Shadowverse, which had 60,740 and 23,929 concurrent players, respectively. Prismata, a niche early access title that achieved its historical top of 121,154 players in 2018, only to never surpass it again, has the second-highest number of concurrent players for a card game.

None of the other major TCG franchises have come close to matching Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel's sales figures. The previous version of Yu-Gi-Oh! on PC had a maximum of 20,000 concurrent players, and Magic: The Gathering games seldom seem to receive much attention from the general public. GWENT has never had more than 5,000 players online at the same time, which may seem surprising provided the zeitgeist it formerly commanded.

Yu-Gi-Oh! is a true free-to-play game. Master Duel has done an excellent job of securing a large player base right away. Of course, it remains to be seen how many players persist with the game, but it's difficult to picture any of its competitors beating it at this stage. Naturally, because these are only data for the PC/Steam version of Master Duel, and the game was released on such a wide range of different platforms (especially mobile devices), the actual number of players playing at any given time is undoubtedly far higher.

Read More: Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is now available

Seeing Yu-Gi-Oh! in action is always entertaining. Despite Master Duel's dominance, players appear to have been waiting for a new card game to join the fray. Valve's Artifact Classic appears to be performing well these days, but it appears unlikely that it will achieve the same levels of popularity as Master Duel has thus far.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is now available for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.

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