PC players are lapping up cat adventure Stray on Steam, despite being free on PlayStation right now

Never underestimate the innate cuteness of cats. It’s a phenomenon that’s served the Internet, Ancient Egyptian civilization and Andrew Lloyd-Webber well. Now it’s the turn of Annapurna Interactive, publishers of miaow ’em up Stray, who have seen the highest concurrent player counts on Steam for any of their games released to date. That’s despite the game being free to people with a PlayStation Plus subscription at present, although you can nab a seven-day trial if you’re interested. Watch the trailer below to get a dose of cuteness for yourself.

Following Stray’s launch on the 19th, it peaked at a concurrent player count of 62,963 according to SteamDB. They aren’t the huge figures seen for 2022’s other smash games such as Elden ring, V Rising or Lost Ark, but Annapurna’s other games haven’t garnered that many players on launch before. As industry pundit BenjiSales tweetedthis June’s excellent speedrunning card-shooter Neon White garnered a peak player count of 3,277, while 2019’s space time-loop adventure Outer Wilds saw just 7,936 at its peak.

There’s obviously an element of cuteness to Stray that’s appealing to a wider audience than many of Annapurna Interactive’s other games. The publisher is enjoying the moment though, having renamed themselves ‘Annapurna Intercative’ on social media. It’s not just humans enjoying Stray either – their cats do too, as Graham pointed out after the game launched earlier this week.

One of RPS’s many cat owners, Katharine awarded the moggy sim a Bestest Bests in her Stray review. “Stray is still a remarkable action adventure game in its own right, and whose naturalistic approach to 3D platforming is among the best I’ve seen,” she said. “It proves we don’t need condescending slathers of paint to point us in the right direction anymore, and that there are better, more immersive ways of traversing dense and detailed play environments.”

Stray is on Steam for £24/$30/€27. It’s exclusive to PlayStation on console though. Cats are fuckle, eh?