The fifth iteration of Codemasters' racing game franchise GRID arrived just over a week ago, launching on PC, as well as PlayStation and Xbox consoles. GRID Legends advertised an authentic racing sim experience replete with over 130 tracks including off-road, street circuit, and arena venues. It's described as the most robust GRID experience yet, but something appears to have been lost in publisher Electronic Arts' messaging. Early numbers from Steam show GRID Legends is not off to a particularly successful start.
Tracking concurrent player count on Steam for new game releases has been an increasingly popular way of measuring a new game's success. GRID Legends' launch was no different, only the numbers discovered were unfortunate in the extreme. According to SteamdB, GRID Legends' peak concurrent players since it launched reached just 455 players. If it wasn't obvious, that's a strikingly low number of players, particularly for a major racing brand from a publisher like Electronic Arts.
For comparison's sake, GRID Autosport's peak concurrent players on Steam eight years ago was 3,554. GRID 2, which launched in 2013, actually had a resurgence three years ago and peaked at 27,339. Even the original GRID had a modern surge, peaking at 4,823 players five years ago. Even the GRID franchise's least-popular release, GRID Autosport, saw a peak of ten times GRID Legends' launch peak. Something appears to have gone very wrong.
It's unclear what could have led to GRID Legends having such a poor adoption rate at launch. The racing game did get a surge of attention on Twitch during its launch week, with over 14,000 viewers watching it at one point. Reviews for GRID Legends aren't outstanding, but they line up with scores for GRID 2 and GRID Autosport. By all means, GRID Legends should have been successful given the semi-recent surges in popularity of both GRID and GRID 2.
What could have gone wrong is that marketing for GRID Legends may have been very ineffective. After all, GRID Legends launched just as both Horizon Forbidden West and Elden Ring arrived, never mind Gran Turismo 7's recent launch. The news cycle has also been dominated by the conflict in Ukraine, leading many companies, including Nintendo, to drawback marketing.
Steam is, of course, just one storefront on one platform. It's entirely possible, and more than likely, that it's performing more strongly on PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Even if it is, however, a peak of just 455 players on Steam can't be seen as anything less than a huge disappointment.
GRID Legends is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: SteamDB
