Halo: Reach becomes a Steam most-played game on launch day

Halo: Reach launched on Steam yesterday, and it immediately raced into the top of Valve’s charts of most-played games. After originally debuting on the Xbox 360 nearly 10 years ago, Microsoft has brought back the classic on PC with an impressive port that includes unlocked frame rates, a field-of-view slider, and even ultra-wide monitor support.

At its launch day peak, 161,000 people were playing Halo: Reach, catapulting it into the fourth spot on Steam’s most-played titles. While it’s now dropped behind Destiny 2, Rainbow Six Siege, and Grand Theft Auto V, Reach is now comfortably in seventh place. It was the best-selling game during Valve’s Steam Autumn Sale without even being on sale, which is quite a feat for a remastered collection of old Xbox games, particularly when players could only access one of them — Reach — on launch day.

Halo: Reach was a massively popular title on the Xbox 360, but it’s still impressive to see it immediately jump into the top of Steam’s most-played games now too. It’s the first Halo game to debut on PC for more than a decade, after Microsoft launched Halo 2 Vista on the company’s terrible Games for Windows Live service back in 2007.

Thankfully, Microsoft is going the Steam route this time, and the company has been testing Halo: Reach extensively to get this launch right. Reach is the first game in the Halo: The Master Chief Collection to launch on PC, and the rest will follow in chronological order. All six games in Halo: The Master Chief Collection are available in a bundle on Steam or through the Microsoft Store for $39.99. Halo: Reach is available separately for $9.99 or free as part of the Xbox Game Pass on Xbox and PC.