Summary
Since the launch of the BioGenesis DLC,Stellarishas witnessed a significant jump in engagement on Steam, with its peak concurrent player count crossing 31K. BioGenesis is the first episode of the ninth season ofStellaris, which came out on June 23, 2025.
After much anticipation,Stellarisrecently kicked off yet another season of the space simulation title that has been consistently refreshed since its 2016 arrival. Earlier in May, the devs released the season’s first episode, BioGenesis, bringing a plethora of additional features to the game for a price. The salient features of the new content drop are two different Bioship shipsets, three new Origins, and the Behemoth Fury crisis, among other things. Alongside this DLC, Update 4.0 (Phoenix Update) was also rolled out, introducing changes related to Pops, Trade Routes, and more. As it turns out, the boost offered by these updates aidedStellaristo climb in popularity among thegrowing number of Steam users.
Stellaris, on the May 5 launch of BioGenesis and Update 4.0, reached a peak player count of 31,681 on Steam. It was the highest number seen by Paradox Interactive’s sci-fi game in about a year, with the last comparable peak of 35K users coming in May 2024. Similar to the latest bump in player engagement, the previous surge also coincided with the release of amajorStellarisupdatein the form of The Machine Age DLC, which was the first episode of Season 8. In the period in between, the Steam concurrent player count for the game has only risen twice: once in September, when the Cosmic Storms DLC (Season 8, third episode) came out, and then again in December.
Stellaris Player Count Exceeds 30K for the First Time in a Year
WhileStellarisis experiencing one of its strongest periods in the past year, it hasn’t been all rosy for the Paradox devs. That’s because, as of late, there have been plenty of critical user reviews pouring in, especially since the launch day of the latest DLC. Since May 5,Stellaris’s space-faring adventureshave evidently been panned for containing annoying amounts of technical issues. This poor reception has resulted in the simulation title receiving 36% unfavorable user feedback on Steam in the past month, which is a far cry from its overall “Very Positive” rating that has only 13% unfavorable reviews.
Fortunately, the studio has been quick to address several issues in the game by shipping out three different patches since the BioGenesis expansion. Moreover, another update, Patch 4.0.5, is expected to improveStellaris’s strategy experiencethrough a wide range of bug fixes, from the issue preventing Behemonths from laying eggs in combat to the issue regarding ship stats being displayed incorrectly upon changing modifiers.
