Outlast: Trials Hits 94,507 Concurrent Players After 90% Steam Discount

A three-year-old cooperative horror game just had its biggest weekend yet. Outlast: Trials, developed by Canadian studio Red Barrels, hit a peak of 94,507 simultaneous players on Steam in early October, according to tracking data. The spike came after the game’s price was cut by 90 percent, bringing it down to just 13 yuan — roughly two US dollars.

The promotion began on October 1 and turned a niche multiplayer offshoot into one of the most-played games on the platform for several days. For a title that first entered early access in May 2023, the numbers represent a remarkable late-stage resurgence, the kind that usually only happens when a game goes free or lands on a subscription service.

Outlast: Trials is not the single-player nightmare the series is known for. It is a first-person cooperative survival horror game set during the Cold War, in which up to four players take on the role of test subjects at the mysterious Murkoff Corporation. The company runs brainwashing and psychological manipulation experiments, and players must work together to survive a series of increasingly unhinged challenges.

The shift to multiplayer changed how the franchise scares people. Instead of isolating players in dark corridors, the game leans on coordination and panic — teammates screaming at each other while a pursuer closes in. That formula has kept a steady audience since launch, but nothing on the scale of this month’s surge.

Deep discounts have become a familiar pattern on Steam, where a low price can briefly resurrect a game’s visibility. Chinese players make up a large share of the platform’s user base, and a 13-yuan price point is an easy impulse buy during a national holiday week. The timing — landing squarely inside China’s Golden Week break — likely amplified the effect.

Red Barrels has continued updating the game with new trials and cosmetic content, which gives returning players something to do beyond replaying old maps. That steady support matters for a live-service horror title, where a shrinking player pool can quickly kill the cooperative experience. A game that requires four people to be fun dies fast if nobody is online.

The studio has not announced a sequel or a major expansion tied to the surge. For now, the story is simpler: a well-made horror game got cheap, and a lot of people decided to find out what the screaming was about. Whether they stay past the discount is the harder question that every developer eventually faces.

For global readers unfamiliar with the series, Outlast began in 2013 as a first-person survival horror game set in an asylum, praised for its found-footage style and refusal to give players weapons. Trials took that DNA and made it social. The result is less about being alone in the dark and more about who you trust when the lights go out.