Red Barrels is riding a Steam concurrent record for The Outlast Trials, set during a 90 percent discount, while co-founder Philippe Morin has been describing how the studio's gore-heavy work affects hiring and playtesting.
The Outlast Trials hit 94,507 concurrent players on Steam, according to SteamDB data cited in coverage of the autumn sale. The previous all-time peak was 36,689 at early access launch in May 2023, so the new figure is roughly 2.5 times the old one. The jump began on October 1 with Steam's autumn sale, where the game is discounted 90 percent from 4,500 yen to 450 yen until October 9. Cosmetic downloadable content is also up to 90 percent off. The September release of the Season 7.1 update added the limited-time Chemical Leak event, which runs until October 6 at 10:00 AM ET and fills trial areas with toxic gas that players must shut off at scattered valves. The same update added two MK Challenges, CHANGE THE PROGRAM and FUND THE CAMPAIGN, plus balance and stability adjustments to the Invasion and Escalation modes.
Two weeks later, co-founder Philippe Morin told GameSpot that a past playtest ended when one participant ran out of the studio crying and never came back. Morin tied the series' gore to personal preference rather than calculated trend-chasing. He said the studio vets applicants on the content they will handle, and he recalled a hire who quit on the Thursday of their first week.
Taken together, the stories put the commercial high and the production cost side by side. The record arrived on a deep discount rather than new content alone, with the Season 7.1 update preceding the sale. Morin's account places the gore problem on the hiring and playtesting side, not the game design side: the studio says it screens applicants in interviews because the work itself can end a run, whether a tester's or an employee's.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the cited Yomimono stories below, each itself sourced, then editorially reviewed. Every fact links the story it came from.
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Philippe Morin, co-founder of Outlast studio Red Barrels, told GameSpot that a past playtest ended when one participant ran out of the studio crying and never came back. Morin tied the series' gore to personal preference rather than calculated trend-chasing, and said the studio vets applicants on the content they will handle. He also recalled a hire who quit on the Thursday of their first week.
Red Barrels' co-op survival horror game The Outlast Trials set a new Steam concurrent player record of 94,507, according to SteamDB data cited in coverage of the game's autumn sale surge. The previous all-time peak, 36,689, came at early access launch in May 2023, so the new figure is roughly 2.5 times that number. The jump began on October 1 with Steam's autumn sale, where the game is discounted 90 percent from 4,500 yen to 450 yen until October 9. Cosmetic downloadable content is also up to 90 percent off. The September release of the Season 7.1 update added the limited-time Chemical Leak event, which runs until October 6 at 10:00 AM ET and fills trial areas with toxic gas that players must shut off at scattered valves. The same update added two MK Challenges, CHANGE THE PROGRAM and FUND THE CAMPAIGN, plus balance and stability adjustments to the Invasion and Escalation modes.