In a world of subpar PC ports, God of War has broken the mold. Despite the game’s director Cory Barlog initially being reluctant to the idea, the game’s release has been a huge win for Sony, with 73,529 concurrent players on Steam on January 16. This is the highest peak reached by any of Sony’s PC catalog including Horizon Zero Dawn, which peaked at 56,557 concurrent players in 2020. Days Gone only drew in 27,450 concurrent players following its release last year. God of War was Steam’s best-seller last week, beating out Monster Hunter Rise, which was released for PC only two days prior.
The God of War PC port was in development for at least two years according to Santa Monica Studios senior developer Matt DeWald. While the game’s reboot was outsourced to Jetpack Interactive, the original creators at Santa Monica worked closely with the team to supervise every aspect of the project. “I actually play most of the time on mouse and keyboard now just because I’ve been working on it for two years, and it’s just been my default,” DeWald said.
When asked about how he felt about using an Xbox controller, DeWald was completely supported. “That’s awesome. We even put in all the glyphs for you so you don’t get confused by the button press. We have no problems with that. You can even use a Switch controller here as well. We tried to add as many options as possible because why limit people who want to play the game?”
God of War is currently sitting at a 97% overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam. It’s unclear how many copies have been sold on the Epic Games Store, where the game is also available.
God of War was originally released in 2018 for the PlayStation 4. The sequel, God of War Ragnarok, is scheduled to be released sometime in 2022.