Stellar Blade Becomes Sony’s Biggest PlayStation Exclusive IP Debut on PC Yet Despite Media-Generated Controversy

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The highly anticipated action game Stellar Blade, which sparked conversation upon its 2024 release, has now arrived on PC and quickly broken sales records.

According to data from the game’s creator, Shift Up, Stellar Blade hit a peak of 192,000 players on Steam when it launched. This is over 2.5 times the number of players that Ghost of Tsushima had at its PC launch, with 77,000 concurrent players. God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and The Last of Us complete the top five single-player games that initially released on PS5 and were later made available on PC.

Shift Up announced that Stellar Blade had the biggest PC launch of any single-player PlayStation exclusive game ever!

– Reached 192k peak concurrent players on Steam at launch
– Over 2.5x more than the previous record

— Genki✨ (@Genki_JPN) November 24, 2025

PC gamers seem happy overall, although there’s been a lot of criticism directed at Stellar Blade—specifically, the main character, Eve.

All About Eve

Okay, so I’ve been checking out Stellar Blade, and it’s a third-person action game where you play as Eve. She’s this seriously skilled soldier, but also the last one left from her whole team – pretty heavy stuff, right?

Honestly, even before Stellar Blade came out, there was a lot of talk about Eve’s character design. I remember watching the gameplay trailer at the PlayStation State of Play and thinking she looked amazing, but some people – mostly game journalists, it seemed – really criticized how sexualized she was. Look, strong female characters aren’t new to gaming – we’ve had characters like Lara Croft for ages! – but some felt Eve’s design was a step backward. It definitely sparked a debate!

Game director Hyung-Tae Kim added to the controversy in an interview with GamesRadar.

He explained, through a translator, that the character’s back received a lot of design focus. Since players primarily view the character from behind during gameplay, the team felt it was the most important part to get right.

The initial comments about Stellar Blade felt unsettling, but the ESRB’s content rating offered a more straightforward assessment. It received an M for Mature rating, citing blood, gore, strong language, suggestive themes, and violence. The ESRB also specifically mentioned that the game features female characters in revealing outfits, such as those with exposed cleavage and tight-fitting, skin-colored suits.

Shortly after its release, the game received an update that changed some of its costumes, violent scenes, and artwork to be less controversial. The developers, Shift Up, stated that these were the intended designs, but many believed Sony pressured them to make the alterations. This led to accusations of censorship and a social media campaign, spearheaded by Mark Kern (also known as Grummz), to restore the game to its original appearance.

Initially, these improvements were only available to PlayStation 5 players. But now that things have calmed down, PC gamers can experience them too and understand the excitement.

Conclusion

Honestly, a lot of the online chatter has been about silly and sometimes rude jokes, but what I’ve noticed is most people are just genuinely enjoying the experience for what it is – a fun game! They’re playing because they want to, and that’s really cool to see.

Reviews for Stellar Blade on PC are now available. But Why Tho? praised the game, saying it’s still enjoyable and has improved even a year after its release.

— metacritic (@metacritic) June 11, 2025

The PS5 version of the game has received generally favorable reviews (scoring 81 on Metacritic), and the PC version is even better rated at 84. A sequel is already in the works for both PS5 and PC, and there’s a chance it could also come to the new Switch 2. Thanks to the successful PC launch, a Stellar Blade 2 is expected to do well, regardless of any potential debate around it.

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2025-11-26 02:56