Doom: The Dark Ages ‘The Biggest Launch in id’s History’ — but No Sales Figure Yet

Doom: The Dark Ages has seen 3 million players since coming out last week, but Bethesda has yet to announce a sales figure for the game.

A social media post from Bethesda confirmed that Doom: The Dark Ages is the biggest launch in id Software’s history by player count, getting to 3 million seven times faster than 2020’s Doom Eternal.

It’s worth digging into the details on these numbers. Doom: The Dark Ages released across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S on May 15, 2025. Steam is the only platform that makes player numbers public, so let’s start there.

On Steam, Doom: The Dark Ages hit a peak concurrent player count of 31,470, and has a 24-hour peak of 16,328 concurrent players. Doom: Eternal hit a peak concurrent player count of 104,891 five years ago, a figure that makes The Dark Ages look like it struggled relatively on Valve’s platform. 2016’s Doom, for extra context, has a peak concurrent player count of 44,271 on Steam, a figure set nine years ago.

However, we must consider the Game Pass effect when thinking about these numbers. Doom: The Dark Ages was a day-one launch across Game Pass for both Xbox consoles and PC. There will be a number of people who dipped into The Dark Ages via Game Pass, rather than pay the $69.99 it costs to buy the game in the U.S.

Perhaps, from Microsoft’s point of view, that’s absolutely fine. It wants to sell PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions after all. But we’ve seen games sell well while also launching day-one on Game Pass, such as the $50 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Clair Obscur has sold an impressive 2 million copies, despite also launching on Game Pass. Doom: The Dark Ages is more expensive — might its price have put some people off?

Which leads me to the next point: Bethesda has announced 3 million players for Doom: The Dark Ages, but not a sales figure. It’s a similar approach it took when celebrating the success of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, which has seen 4 million players while also launching day-one on Game Pass. Coincidentally, Ubisoft also announced 3 million players for Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, rather than hard sales.

In truth, only Bethesda and Microsoft will know if Doom: The Dark Ages has hit whatever internal targets it has set. But it’s safe to say that the 3 million player count suggests Doom: The Dark Ages has done particularly well on console and Game Pass, while perhaps struggling on Steam.

IGN’s Doom: The Dark Ages review returned a 9/10. We said: “Doom: The Dark Ages may strip away the mobility focus of Doom Eternal, but replaces it with a very weighty and powerful style of play that is different from anything the series has done before, and still immensely satisfying in its own way.”

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.