When Friday the 13th: The Game launched in May 2017, it gave horror fans the chance to experience the franchise from both sides of the hunt. One player controlled Jason Voorhees, while up to seven others played as camp counsellors trying to survive the night.
The concept worked commercially, at least initially.
Within two months, the game had sold 1.8 million copies, according to Gun Media co-founder Wes Keltner. That was an impressive result for an independently published multiplayer horror game, particularly one that struggled with server problems during launch.
But that figure only tells part of the story. Steam tracking services now estimate that the game sold around 1.6 million copies on PC, while its concurrent player count has fallen considerably from its 2017 peak.
Friday the 13th: The Game sold 1.8 million copies in two months
The clearest confirmed sales milestone came in August 2017, when Gun Media revealed that Friday the 13th: The Game had moved 1.8 million units in the two months following its release.
The figure was reported by PC Games Insider, following an interview with Keltner. PC Gamer also reported the milestone, noting that the game had reached the figure despite its technical problems.
Those problems were particularly visible at launch. Keltner said that around 100,000 players arrived within the first 20 minutes, overwhelming the game's servers. That number describes the influx of players he reported, not a verified concurrent-player record across all platforms.
The sales milestone is important because it shows that the game found a substantial audience even while players were dealing with matchmaking issues, crashes, and other technical problems.
Its recognisable horror franchise, multiplayer premise and popularity among streamers helped it reach beyond the usual audience for smaller survival-horror games.
However, the 1.8 million figure is an early sales milestone, not a confirmed lifetime total.
Gun Media did not publish a final breakdown showing how many copies were sold on PlayStation, Xbox and PC, or how many additional copies were sold after the announcement.
How many copies did Friday the 13th sell on PC?
For a more recent look at the game's commercial performance, VG Insights' Steam tracking page estimates that Friday the 13th: The Game has sold approximately 1.6 million paid copies on Steam, generating an estimated $30.3 million in premium revenue.
These are third-party estimates, not figures confirmed by Gun Media or Valve. They also cover Steam rather than the game's entire release history.
It would be misleading to add the estimated 1.6 million Steam sales to the 1.8 million copies reported in 2017. The figures overlap: the original milestone already included PC sales, while the VG Insights estimate attempts to track Steam sales over a longer period.
The game also expanded beyond its original launch platforms. It arrived on Nintendo Switch as Friday the 13th: The Game – Ultimate Slasher Edition on August 13, 2019, bringing the base game and previously released downloadable content to the platform. Gun Media's Switch launch announcement confirmed the release, but no reliable public sales figure for the Switch edition has surfaced.
That leaves an important gap in the game's commercial history. We know it sold 1.8 million copies in its first two months and that third-party estimates put its Steam sales at around 1.6 million. What we do not have is a verified final total across PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.
Emmanuel Umahi
Friday the 13th's Steam player numbers show how its popularity changed
Sales figures reveal how many copies people bought, but they do not tell us how many players continued returning to the game. For that, Steam's concurrent-player data offers a useful, though limited, view of its PC audience.
According to SteamDB, Friday the 13th: The Game reached an all-time peak of 16,096 concurrent players on May 29, 2017. That means more than 16,000 people were playing the Steam version at the same time.
The figure is not a count of everyone who bought or downloaded the game. It is a snapshot of simultaneous players on Steam, and it excludes activity on PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.
SteamCharts provides a longer view of the game's average concurrent-player count. Its historical figures show how the initial rush gave way to a much smaller regular audience.
The early numbers show that the game had a strong start. Its average Steam player count was above 5,000 in both May and June 2017, before dropping to around 2,845 in July.
There were smaller periods of renewed activity. The average rose to around 1,670 in July 2019 and climbed again towards the end of 2020 and into January 2021. Those increases show that the game's audience did not disappear immediately after launch, although the figures alone do not establish what caused each rebound.
The longer-term direction is clearer. By December 2023, the average had fallen to around 200 concurrent Steam players. In October 2026, SteamCharts recorded an average of just 9.51.
That is a steep decline from the game's launch period. It does not mean only nine people still own or play the game worldwide; it means that, on average, roughly that many people were playing simultaneously on Steam during that month.
Why did Friday the 13th lose its player base?
The game's declining numbers cannot be explained by one event alone. However, its development and support were disrupted by a legal dispute over the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise.
In June 2018, Gun Media announced that it would stop developing new content while the legal claim remained unresolved. That meant planned additions, including new maps, characters, Jason variations and alternative modes, would not be released. The studio explained the decision in its official end-of-content announcement.
The consequences continued into 2020. Gun Media announced that the game's dedicated servers would be decommissioned following its final patch in November.
Players could still use peer-to-peer matchmaking and private matches, but the change marked another reduction in the support available to the online game. Game Developer reported the announcement and its connection to the legal dispute.
The game's commercial availability also came to an end. Gun Media announced in June 2023 that its licence would expire on December 31 of that year, after which the game would no longer be available to purchase. Existing owners were told they could continue playing until at least December 31, 2024. GameSpot covered the delisting announcement.
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