Expedition 33 Player Count is Way Up

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, 2025’s official Game of the Year, is seeing a significant player resurgence on Steam following its record-breaking night at The Game Awards. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 peaked at just over 145,000 concurrent players on the platform in May and has averaged between 15,000 and 20,000 players at peak times over the last month. But the turn-based RPG’s big win last night appears to have given it a new lease of life, as players are now flocking back to the title.

After forming Sandfall Interactive in 2020, the studio got to work on its very first title, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Although only developed by a small team based in France, the turn-based RPG took the world by storm, receiving heavy praise not just from critics and players, but from other, larger development studios. Built using Unreal Engine 5, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 mixes fantasy and European “Belle Époque” art influences as it follows the members of Expedition 33 on their quest to destroythe Paintress so that she can never paint death again. Sandfall found massive success with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, selling more than 3 million copies in just 33 days. Now, just a few months later, it’s swept The Game Awards and taken home its most coveted award.

On December 11, Geoff Keighley returned with the yearly Game Awards ceremony. The three-hour-long event featured plenty of world premieres, updates, live performances, and, most importantly, lots of awards. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won big during the event, taking home nine awards in total and breaking The Last of Us: Part 2‘s previous record of seven wins. The indie title now holds the record for most wins at The Game Awards, picking up wins for Best Game Direction, Narrative, Art Direction, Score and Music, RPG, Independent Game, Debut Indie Game, Performance (for Jennifer English), and, of course, Game of the Year.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Player Count Soars on Steam After Game Awards

With The Game Awards now done and dusted for another year, fans appear to be flocking back to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as its player count is seeing a big spike on Steam. While the official figures for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S remain unknown, SteamDB confirms that its concurrent player count has nearly doubled from the average 20,000 peak it usually sees most days. As of writing, there are 39,141 active players on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but that number is continuing to grow and could reach even more impressive heights as the night goes on.

There are two reasons why Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is seeing such a sudden resurgence. The first, and most obvious one, is that it swept The Game Awards last night and has likely given plenty of gamers a reason to check the game out for the very first time. The fear of missing out and not having played 2025’s biggest game has likely swept the world, but that’s not the only reason. During Sandfall’s acceptance speech, creative director Guillaume Broche revealed that a new ‘Thank You’ content update for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available for free right now. The patch adds a new playable environment, taking the characters on new adventures, new music tracks, challenging boss battles for late-game players, an official Photo Mode, quality-of-life improvements, and much more.

After the huge success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, all eyes are going to be on Sandfall to see how they can top this momentous title. While it’s still likely to be quite some time before fans get to see what the studio is working on, it has already revealed a few minor details. Back in October, Guillaume Broche told PCGamesN that work had begun on the studio’s next game with “a lot of very good ideas” in the pipeline. The CEO also said that the studio wants to create a new game that “feels very unique and artsy.”

Released

April 24, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence

Developer(s)

Sandfall Interactive

Publisher(s)

Kepler Interactive