Resident Evil Requiem hit 340,000 concurrent players on Steam within days of its February 27, 2026 release, an all-time franchise record more than triple the previous high set by Resident Evil Village in 2021. Capcom confirmed the game had already sold more than 5 million units worldwide by March 4, 2026, one week after launch. Dead by Daylight, the genre’s long-running multiplayer staple, has logged more than 70 million lifetime players since 2016 and still averaged 78,084 concurrent Steam users over the last 30 days as of July 2026. Indie horror has proven just as lucrative at a fraction of the budget: the co-op extraction game R.E.P.O. generated an estimated 113.6 million dollars in gross Steam revenue off a 10 dollar price tag. This roundup pulls together data from Capcom’s investor relations filings, SteamCharts and SteamSpy, GameDiscoverCo’s indie market newsletter, Circana’s US retail charts (via GamesIndustry.biz), TwitchTracker, and Wikipedia’s sourced developer disclosures to map where horror gaming stands in 2026.
TL;DR
- Resident Evil Requiem hit a Steam concurrent-player franchise record of 340,000 within days of its February 27, 2026 launch (VGTimes, citing SteamDB-tracked data).
- Capcom confirmed worldwide sales of Resident Evil Requiem passed 5 million units by March 4, 2026, one week after release (Capcom investor relations).
- Resident Evil 2’s 2019 remake remains the franchise’s best-seller at 18.30 million lifetime units (Capcom, Platinum Titles list, as of March 31, 2026).
- Dead by Daylight has logged more than 70 million lifetime players since its 2016 launch, with roughly 1 million daily players as of June 2026 (Wikipedia, via Behaviour Interactive).
- Phasmophobia has sold close to 22 million copies since 2020, including more than 2 million on consoles within 104 days of its PS5 and Xbox launch (Wikipedia).
- R.E.P.O. sold 14.4 million copies and grossed an estimated 113.6 million dollars on Steam through May 2025 (Alinea Analytics, via GameDiscoverCo network).
- Lethal Company’s lifetime sales are estimated above 10 million copies, up from an early GameDiscoverCo estimate of about 642,000 copies three weeks after its November 2023 launch (GameDiscoverCo; Wikipedia).
- Poppy Playtime Chapter 5 sold 427,000 combined Steam and Epic copies in its first weeks, and the franchise has grossed an estimated 100 million dollars overall (GameDiscoverCo).
- Silent Hill 2’s 2024 remake reached 2.5 million units by October 2025, pushing the whole franchise past 13 million cumulative units (Wikipedia).
- Alan Wake 2 needed close to a year to recoup its 70 million euro development and marketing budget before turning a profit at the end of 2024 (Wikipedia, via Remedy Entertainment).
- Dead by Daylight ranked 13th among all games on Twitch by average viewers in July 2026, at 25,478 average concurrent viewers (TwitchTracker).
1. Resident Evil Requiem and the Franchise Record Books
Resident Evil just proved a 30-year-old franchise can still set records instead of coasting on nostalgia. Resident Evil Requiem hit 340,000 concurrent players on Steam around its February 27, 2026 launch, more than triple the previous franchise record. Capcom’s five best-selling individual Resident Evil titles have now shipped a combined 77.5 million units, and four of those five released after 2017 pushed the series back toward tighter, first-person survival horror instead of the action-heavy design of the mid-2000s. Requiem’s US launch-week performance, tracked by Circana, extended that momentum from concurrent players into dollar sales as well.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Resident Evil 2 Remake lifetime sales | 18.30 million units | Capcom, Platinum Titles list |
| Resident Evil 7 biohazard lifetime sales | 17.40 million units | Capcom, Platinum Titles list |
| Resident Evil Village lifetime sales | 14.90 million units | Capcom, Platinum Titles list |
| Resident Evil 4 Remake lifetime sales | 13.60 million units | Capcom, Platinum Titles list |
| Resident Evil 3 Remake lifetime sales | 13.30 million units | Capcom, Platinum Titles list |
| Resident Evil Requiem worldwide sales (1 week post-launch) | 5+ million units | Capcom press release, March 4, 2026 |
| Resident Evil Requiem Steam concurrent-player peak | 340,000 (new franchise record) | VGTimes, citing SteamDB-tracked data |
| Resident Evil Requiem US launch-week dollar sales vs. Resident Evil Village | +60% | GamesIndustry.biz, citing Circana |
Outlier: the previous concurrent-player record, Resident Evil Village’s 106,631 in May 2021, held for nearly five years. Requiem broke it by more than 200,000 players in a single release, a jump with no real precedent elsewhere in the franchise’s history.
2. Live Multiplayer Horror: Dead by Daylight and Phasmophobia
These two games anchor horror’s live-service side, and their July 2026 numbers show very different trajectories a decade and half-decade after launch, respectively. Dead by Daylight’s 30-day average climbed to 78,084 concurrent players, up 9.9% month over month, ten years after its 2016 debut. Phasmophobia’s average fell to 8,461 over the same window, down from 13,832 in May, a reminder that ghost-hunting co-op games see sharper seasonal swings than asymmetrical PvP titles with a steady competitive core. Both remain far below their historic peaks, which is normal for any live game years past its viral launch window.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Dead by Daylight, live concurrent players | 51,874 | SteamCharts |
| Dead by Daylight, 24-hour peak | 75,994 | SteamCharts |
| Dead by Daylight, 30-day average (+9.9% month over month) | 78,084 | SteamCharts |
| Dead by Daylight, lifetime players | 70+ million (June 2026) | Wikipedia, via Behaviour Interactive |
| Dead by Daylight, estimated Steam owners | 20 million to 50 million | SteamSpy |
| Phasmophobia, live concurrent players | 10,871 | SteamCharts |
| Phasmophobia, 24-hour peak | 18,627 | SteamCharts |
| Phasmophobia, total sales (Dec 2024) | ~22 million units | Wikipedia, via Kinetic Games |
Co-op horror lives or dies on voice communication between players, which is why so many Dead by Daylight and Phasmophobia squads run their sessions through Discord rather than in-game chat. Groups looking for a spookier or disguised voice for jump-scare pranks often layer a voice changer built for Discord on top of that setup, adding effects to callouts without a second app running in the background.
3. Indie Horror’s Breakout Economics
Horror is the genre where a two-person team can out-earn a studio blockbuster, and 2023 through 2026 produced several proofs of concept. R.E.P.O. sold 14.4 million copies and grossed an estimated 113.6 million dollars on Steam through May 2025, entirely from a 10 dollar price point with essentially no marketing spend. Lethal Company followed a similar curve at a much larger scale: GameDiscoverCo’s early estimate of roughly 642,000 copies and 5.7 million dollars gross, taken three weeks after its October 2023 launch, undercounted the game by an order of magnitude once word of mouth compounded through Discord servers and Twitch clips.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| R.E.P.O., lifetime Steam copies sold (May 2025) | 14.4 million | Alinea Analytics, via GameDiscoverCo network |
| R.E.P.O., gross Steam revenue (May 2025) | ~$113.6 million | Alinea Analytics |
| Lethal Company, early estimate (3 weeks post-launch, Nov 2023) | ~642,000 copies / $5.7M gross | GameDiscoverCo |
| Lethal Company, later aggregated lifetime estimate (Jan 2024) | 10+ million copies | Wikipedia, citing Push To Talk |
| Poppy Playtime Chapter 5, combined Steam + Epic sales | 427,000 copies | GameDiscoverCo |
| Poppy Playtime franchise, estimated total revenue | ~$100 million | GameDiscoverCo |
| Buckshot Roulette, copies sold within 2 weeks of April 2024 launch | 1 million | Wikipedia, via developer Steam post |
| Buckshot Roulette, lifetime copies sold (Dec 2025) | 8 million | Wikipedia, cross-referenced by Statista |
Proximity and voice chat are core mechanics in this wave of co-op horror, not an afterthought: Lethal Company and R.E.P.O. both route in-game audio through spatial voice chat that streamers frequently layer with real-time voice effects to make jump-scare reactions land harder for viewers watching along.
4. Survival Horror Franchises Beyond Resident Evil
Silent Hill and Alan Wake both used the 2024 remake and sequel wave to reset commercial expectations for slower, narrative-driven horror. The Silent Hill 2 remake sold 1 million units in its first 4 days in October 2024, the fastest start in the franchise’s history, and pushed cumulative franchise sales past 13 million units by October 2025. Alan Wake 2 took much longer to turn a profit: Remedy Entertainment’s own financial reports show the game had not recouped its 70 million euro development and marketing budget as late as mid-2024, nearly a full year after launch, before royalties finally began flowing at the end of that year.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Silent Hill 2 Remake, units sold in first 4 days | 1+ million | Wikipedia, Silent Hill 2 (2024 video game) |
| Silent Hill 2 Remake, cumulative sales (Oct 2025) | 2.5+ million | Wikipedia |
| Silent Hill franchise, cumulative sales (Oct 2025) | 13+ million | Wikipedia |
| Alan Wake 2, development + marketing budget | EUR 70 million | Wikipedia, Alan Wake 2, via Remedy Entertainment |
| Alan Wake 2, units sold (end of 2024) | 2+ million | Wikipedia, via Remedy Entertainment |
| Outlast franchise, cumulative players (Oct 2024) | 37 million | Wikipedia, Outlast |
| Five Nights at Freddy’s, creator income through 2019 | $66 million | GameFile, citing Scott Cawthon’s tax records |
| The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan, units sold (1 year post-launch) | 1+ million | Wikipedia, via Bandai Namco |
Outlier: Alan Wake 2’s slow payback, close to a year to break even, sits in sharp contrast to Requiem’s 5 million units in a week or R.E.P.O.’s near-instant profitability at a tenth of the price, underlining how differently AAA narrative horror and indie or live-service horror recoup their budgets.
5. Steam Concurrent-Player Records Across the Genre
Stacking every major horror release’s concurrent-player peak against each other shows just how far Requiem’s launch outran the rest of the genre. Resident Evil Requiem’s 340,000-player peak is more than triple the next-highest concurrent-player record on this list. Survival and extraction games built around free-to-play claims or ultra-low pricing, including Sons of the Forest, Content Warning, and Lethal Company, dominate the rest of the top tier, all clearing 100,000 concurrent players on launch day or within their first week despite tiny teams and marketing budgets a fraction of Capcom’s.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Resident Evil Requiem, peak concurrent (Feb 2026) | 340,000 | VGTimes, citing SteamDB-tracked data |
| Sons of the Forest, launch-day peak concurrent (Feb 2023) | 250,000+ | Wikipedia, Sons of the Forest |
| Content Warning, peak concurrent within 24h of free launch (Apr 2024) | 200,000+ | Wikipedia, Content Warning |
| Dead by Daylight, all-time peak concurrent | 168,845 | SteamCharts |
| Phasmophobia, all-time peak concurrent (Oct 2020) | 112,241 | SteamCharts |
| Resident Evil Village, peak concurrent (May 2021, prior RE record) | 106,631 | Forbes, May 2021 |
| Lethal Company, peak concurrent (Nov 2023) | 100,000 | Wikipedia, via IGN |
| Poppy Playtime Chapter 5, peak concurrent (Feb-Mar 2026) | 52,800 | GameDiscoverCo |
Note: several of these peaks come from short promotional windows, free 24-hour claims or day-one launches, rather than sustained averages, so they measure spike capacity more than steady-state popularity.
6. Horror on Twitch: Streaming and Reaction Culture
Individual horror games perform well on Twitch, but Twitch’s own generic “Horror” category badly undercounts the genre because most popular titles get tracked under their own dedicated game categories instead. Dead by Daylight alone pulled 25,478 average concurrent viewers in July 2026, ranking 13th among every game on Twitch and commanding a 1.192% share of total platform viewership, while the catch-all Horror category logged just 4,400 hours watched over the same 30-day span. Indie and co-op titles see the sharpest seasonal spikes, since creators cluster around whatever is newest and scariest each October.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Dead by Daylight, Twitch rank by average viewers (July 2026) | #13 of all games | TwitchTracker |
| Dead by Daylight, average concurrent Twitch viewers | 25,478 (+13.7% over 7 days) | TwitchTracker |
| Twitch “Horror” category, hours watched (30-day) | 4,400 (+25.6%) | SullyGnome |
| Twitch “Horror” category, peak concurrent viewers (30-day) | 504 (+21.2%) | SullyGnome |
| Voices of the Void, Halloween 2025 watch-hours growth | ~+400% | StreamsCharts |
| R.E.P.O., Halloween 2025 average streaming-channel growth | ~+300% | StreamsCharts |
Outlier: StreamsCharts found that year-round staples like Dead by Daylight and DayZ barely moved during Halloween weekend 2025, while newer indie and co-op titles saw hours watched double or triple, since Twitch’s horror audience chases novelty more than franchise loyalty. Streamers running these sessions often route a voice changer set up in OBS so screams, reactions, and in-character voices carry a distinct on-stream persona separate from their regular commentary voice.
Summary: Horror Games by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Resident Evil Requiem, Steam concurrent-player peak | 340,000 (new franchise record) | VGTimes, citing SteamDB |
| Resident Evil Requiem, worldwide sales (1 week post-launch) | 5+ million units | Capcom |
| Resident Evil 2 Remake, lifetime sales | 18.30 million units | Capcom |
| Resident Evil Requiem, US launch dollar sales vs. Resident Evil Village | +60% | Circana, via GamesIndustry.biz |
| Dead by Daylight, 30-day average concurrent players | 78,084 (+9.9% month over month) | SteamCharts |
| Dead by Daylight, lifetime players | 70+ million | Wikipedia, via Behaviour Interactive |
| Dead by Daylight, Twitch average viewers (July 2026) | 25,478 (#13 of all games) | TwitchTracker |
| Phasmophobia, total sales (Dec 2024) | ~22 million units | Wikipedia |
| Phasmophobia, all-time peak concurrent | 112,241 | SteamCharts |
| R.E.P.O., lifetime Steam copies sold | 14.4 million | Alinea Analytics |
| R.E.P.O., gross Steam revenue | ~$113.6 million | Alinea Analytics |
| Lethal Company, aggregated lifetime sales | 10+ million copies | Wikipedia |
| Poppy Playtime, estimated franchise revenue | ~$100 million | GameDiscoverCo |
| Buckshot Roulette, lifetime copies sold | 8 million | Wikipedia |
| Silent Hill 2 Remake, cumulative sales | 2.5+ million | Wikipedia |
| Silent Hill franchise, cumulative sales | 13+ million | Wikipedia |
| Alan Wake 2, development + marketing budget | EUR 70 million | Wikipedia, via Remedy Entertainment |
| Sons of the Forest, launch-day peak concurrent | 250,000+ | Wikipedia |
| Twitch “Horror” category, hours watched (30-day) | 4,400 (+25.6%) | SullyGnome |
Methodology and Sources
Every figure above traces to a named primary source, including Capcom investor relations, Remedy Entertainment financial reports, and Valve’s own Steam data, or to a Tier 2 aggregator that discloses its own methodology and underlying source, including Circana retail data via GamesIndustry.biz, GameDiscoverCo’s newsletter, Alinea Analytics, SteamCharts, SteamSpy, TwitchTracker, SullyGnome, and StreamsCharts. Figures older than three years are labeled as the most recent available rather than presented as current. Where two sources reported different numbers for the same game, such as Lethal Company’s early GameDiscoverCo estimate versus its later aggregated total, both are shown rather than one being silently dropped.
- Capcom, Platinum Titles list
- Capcom, Resident Evil Requiem sales press release
- GamesIndustry.biz, citing Circana US retail charts
- SteamCharts, Dead by Daylight
- SteamCharts, Phasmophobia
- SteamSpy, Dead by Daylight
- GameDiscoverCo, Lethal Company analysis
- GameDiscoverCo, Poppy Playtime Chapter 5 analysis
- GameDiscoverCo, Crow Country analysis
- Alinea Analytics, R.E.P.O. figures, via GameDiscoverCo network
- GameFile, Scott Cawthon income figures
- TwitchTracker, top games by viewership
- SullyGnome, Horror category stats
- StreamsCharts, Twitch horror games Halloween 2025
- Wikipedia, Dead by Daylight
- Wikipedia, Phasmophobia (video game)
- Wikipedia, Silent Hill 2 (2024 video game)
- Wikipedia, Alan Wake 2
- Wikipedia, Outlast (video game)
- Wikipedia, Sons of the Forest
- Wikipedia, Content Warning (video game)
- Wikipedia, Buckshot Roulette
- Wikipedia, The Dark Pictures Anthology
Data watch: Capcom updates its platinum titles list quarterly alongside its earnings calls, SteamCharts and SteamSpy refresh player and ownership numbers continuously, GameDiscoverCo and Alinea Analytics publish new indie-horror breakdowns as notable launches happen, and the Twitch tracking sites (TwitchTracker, SullyGnome, StreamsCharts) update daily. We plan to revisit this roundup quarterly as new sales milestones and player-count data are published.
Last updated: July 24, 2026.