Windrose is an awkward skull and bones on Steam

Is everyone sick of pirated games? I honestly thought so a few weeks ago when Skull and Bones and Sea of Thieves were sitting on pretty crappy 24 hour peaks on SteamDB, with Skull and Bones barely able to muster 200 players a day. Of course, those are just the numbers from Steam, and both will likely be more popular on consoles, but they're still pretty formidable.

It really seemed like people weren't all that excited about sailing the high seas right now, but it seems like that could just be a case of Sea of Thieves and Skull of Bones not really doing it for people. That's because Windrose, the new pirate survival adventure game from Kraken Express Studios, blows both of its closest competitors out of the water.

Windrose is currently the king of pirate games

A pirate at the wheel of a ship in Windrose.

Windrose launched over 10 days ago and managed to amass more players on Steam than Crimson Desert in that time. As word of the game's popularity spread, Windrose set the maximum player count to 222,134 on April 19th, which is very impressive considering the game has had almost zero marketing and is still in early access.

Things have calmed down a bit since then, with the game dropping to a 24-hour peak of 153,020 players at the time of writing, but to say it's currently the most popular pirated game on Steam would be an understatement.

Pirate overlooking the ships on the coast.

Seriously, why don't we have more good pirate games?

Where are all my pirate games guys?

Contrast this with Skull and Bones, a game that is extremely similar to Windrose, but with a lot more marketing and anticipation thrown into it. When it launched on Steam in September 2024, it peaked at just over 2,000 players, and at the time of writing it's barely racking up 200 players per day, with a recent high of 207 players.

If you do any numbering, Windrose sits nicely with a player base that is more than 730 times the size enjoyed by Skull and Bones. Sea of Thieves is doing much better in this regard, as its current 24-hour peak is 9,759, meaning that Windrose's player base is only 15 times larger than that of Rare's first-class naval adventure.

Despite this, it's pretty convincing that Windrose is currently the most popular pirated game in the gaming industry, and that an indie developer has once again given players what they wanted, putting several reputable studios to shame. It seems like this is happening more and more, and that the indie scene is probably where you'll find your next favorite game.