PS Plus’ October games lineup is the most popular of 2024 so far

The PS Plus October 2024 player count shows that 7.1% more players showed up for games like Dead Space and WWE 2K24 than any other lineup this year.

Lee Brady

Published 13 Oct 2024

Sony quietly employed a bold new tactic with the PlayStation Plus October 2024 monthly games lineup: give PS5 and PS4 players two games that they might really want. It's a move that seems to have paid off as the PS Plus October 2024 player count shows this month's lineup pulling in 7.1% more players than any other PS Plus Essential lineup in 2024.

PS Plus October games score big with WWE 2K24 and Dead Space

October 2024's PS Plus games debuted with a 16.7% increase in active players compared to the PS Plus lineup for September 2024
WWE 2K24 was the most popular game in the October 2024 lineup, followed by Dead Space
October 2024's PS Plus games drew in 7.1% more players than May 2024's lineup, the previous best-performing lineup of the year

Using a gameplay data sample from over 3.1 million active PSN accounts (courtesy of our partnership with GameInsights, which draws most of its PSN data from sources beyond TrueTrophies), we've kept track of the debut player count for every PS5 and PS4 game made available via PS Plus Essential.

This includes October 2024's PS Plus Essential games lineup of WWE 2K24, Dead Space, and Doki Doki Literature Club Plus — all of which were made available to PS Plus subscribers on Tuesday, October 1, 2024.

Compared to the PS Plus September 2024 player count, October 2024's monthly games drew in 16.7% more active PS5 and PS4 players in their debut week (data from week ending Sunday, October 6, 2024). Sony has now achieved PS Plus player count growth for four consecutive months now — the longest positive streak we've seen in the last two years.

What's more, is that this latest burst of PS Plus subscriber interest means that October 2024's monthly game lineup is the most popular of 2024 so far. These latest three games have pulled in a combined 7.1% more active PS Plus players than the previous best-performing trio of monthly PS Plus games: May 2024's lineup of EA Sports FC 24, Ghostrunner 2, and Tunic.

The best PS Plus Essential months of 2024 so far

#1 — October 2024 (biggest game: WWE 2K24)
#2 — May 2024 (biggest game: EA Sports FC 24)
#3 — September 2024 (biggest game: Harry Potter Quidditch Champions)
#4 — March 2024 (biggest game: Sifu)
#5 — January 2024 (biggest game: Evil West)
#6 — August 2024 (biggest game: Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga)
#7 — July 2024 (biggest game: Among Us)
#8 — April 2024 (biggest game: Immortals of Aveum)
#9 — June 2024 (biggest game: Streets of Rage 4)
#10 — February 2024 (biggest game: Foamstars)

What's particularly interesting about the October 2024 lineup's success is that, unlike with May 2024's lineup, there's not just one single game luring in the majority of subscribers and pulling up the monthly player count on its own. Instead, October 2024 had two almost equally popular monthly games: WWE 2K24 and Dead Space.

While WWE 2K24 was the most popular game in October 2024's lineup, debuting as the fourth-biggest PS Plus game to release in 2024, it wasn't enormously more popular than Dead Space. The popular wrestling game only saw 9.8% more active PS Plus players than Dead Space, which debuted just below WWE 2K24 as the fifth-biggest PS Plus game this year.

Combined, both games easily make up for the weaker PS Plus debut of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, which saw 37.9% fewer subscribers booting it up on PS5 and PS4 than Dead Space. Of the 30 games released via PS Plus Essential in 2024 so far, Doki Doki Literature Club had the 18th biggest debut — a fairly middling performance for the twist-riddled visual novel.

Top PS Plus Essential games of 2024 so far

#1 — EA Sports FC 24 (May 2024)
#2 — Harry Potter Quidditch Champions (September 24)
#3 — Sifu (March 2024)
#4 — WWE 2K24 (October 2024)
#5 — Dead Space (October 2024)
#6 — Evil West (January 2024)
#7 — Foamstars (February 2024)
#8 — LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga (August 2024)
#9 — Among Us (July 2024)
#10 — Tunic (May 2024)

Taking a wider look at things, it's worth noting that despite being the biggest month for PS Plus Essential this year, October 2024's PS Plus player count still falls 17.1% short of last year's best-performing monthly lineup. March 2023 saw a massive influx of players with its lineup of Battlefield 2042, Minecraft Dungeons, and Code Vein that has yet to be matched in popularity by anything we've seen this year.

Granted, March 2023's PS Plus player count was boosted by the same strategy used by October 2024's lineup: give subscribers two games they really want instead of just one. Both Battlefield 2042 and Minecraft Dungeons made the top five PS Plus Essential games for 2023, similar to what we're seeing here with WWE 2K24 and Dead Space in 2024.

If Sony can keep this strategy up and provide its subscribers with more of the best PS Plus games for the rest of the year, it might just be able to get back to the higher active subscriber numbers we saw throughout 2023. In the meantime, have you been playing October 2024's PS Plus monthly games? Let us know in the comments below.

Chart compiled using gameplay data from over 3.1 million active PlayStation accounts (not just TrueTrophies accounts). Chart information is copyright GameInsights. Regarding this data:

Our 3.1 million sample of 116 million projected MAUs on PSN has a ±0.09% margin of error with a 99.9% confidence interval.
When an account opens a game, this is registered as a game being played. Accounts can only register a game once per week.
Our data is good for suggesting general trends — we represent this using percentages, not numbers.

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Written by Lee Brady

Staff Writer Lee keeps one eye on the future (Astro Bot), one eye on the past (PS1, PS2, and PS3 games), and his secret third eye on junk he really likes (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Sonic). A PlayStation fan for over 25 years, he loves replaying classic games via PS Plus.