[UPDATE #2 - February 20, 2026] KOEI TECMO and TEAM NINJA have announced today that Nioh 3 has already sold one million units, becoming the fastest-selling game in the series.
[Update - February 8, 2026]: It seemed all Nioh 3 needed to become Team NINJA's biggest release on Steam was for it to be the weekend, because on Saturday, February 7, at 12:00 UTC, it surpassed Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's peak concurrent player count to officially take the top spot.
It hit 77,930 concurrent players to break Wo Long's 75K, and climbed further to hit a peak of 88,045 the next day.
[Original Story]: Nioh 3 is officially out, and it only took the game three hours (one for every Nioh game) for it to become the most-played Nioh game on Steam ever. After going live at 05:00 UTC, with 22K+ jumping in right away, per SteamDB, it had already surpassed its predecessors' concurrent player counts just three hours later.
The first Nioh game peaked on Steam at 10,649 concurrent players, meaning that Nioh 3 had more than doubled the first game's peak concurrent player count right from the start. Nioh 2's peak concurrent player count currently sits at 41,325 players, which Nioh 3 surpassed by hitting 42,115 players by 08:00 UTC.
In the hours since then, it didn't just level out at 42K. The game continued to rise and hit a peak of 70,186 players an hour ago, at the time of this writing. It has since dipped slightly to just under 70K with approximately 52 players needing to sign off, but that doesn't make the accomplishment any less impressive.
Ultimately, concurrent player counts are not the most significant factor for single-player games, though it's worth giving them a look when a new major single-player title launches, especially in this case, when we have two previous games to compare it to. It's not yet Team Ninja's biggest release on Steam overall, though, as Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty still holds that title with a 75,906 concurrent players peak. That said, if Nioh 3 continues its upward trend, it'll fly by that number in short order.
It's great to see a veteran studio like Team NINJA finding new heights of success in 2026. Wccftech's Francesco De Meo gave Nioh 3 a 9.8/10 in his review, and while he admits he has been a fan of Team NINJA's work for years, he's not the only one who shares the sentiment that Nioh 3 may just be one of Team NINJA's best games ever. The game currently sits at an 86 on Metacritic, with none of its reviews sitting in the 'Negative' column and only six of its reviews in the 'Mixed' column. Hopefully, this milestone is followed by a sales milestone announcement from Team NINJA.
"Nioh 3 is the culmination of Team NINJA’s evolution," writes De Meo. "By masterfully blending the engaging exploration of an open-field structure with a deep, dual-style combat system that bridges the gap between 'Masocore' and character-action, it has evolved into a genre of its own. While technical issues hold the game back, it is the definitive samurai fantasy and a modern masterpiece of action design."
For more on Nioh 3, you can check out all of our coverage of the game in our dedicated hub page. For help overcoming all of its challenges, check out our complete walkthrough and guides hub.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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