Another Xbox Game Pass game tops the Steam charts

Grounded, the new survival game about kids who are shrunk down to the size of bugs, is the latest Xbox Game Studios title to make its way to Steam and climb to the top of the platform’s sales ranks.

Developed by Microsoft-owned Obsidian Entertainment, Grounded was released into Early Access on PC and Xbox One on July 28. Grounded quickly reached the top of Steam’s top sellers chart, beating out games like Destroy All Humans! and the turn-based strategy game, Othercide. It also joined fellow Microsoft Game Studios games, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Sea of Thieves on Steam’s list of most-purchased games.

While it’s not exactly surprising that these games are popular — especially with so few big PC games released recently — it is a little bit surprising that they’re all this popular on Steam. All three of the games, including the brand new Grounded, are also available on Microsoft’s Game Pass for both Xbox One and PC. This means that players on Steam are opting to buy Grounded at its full $29.99 price rather than spending $4.99 or $14.99 to get all three of those games, and quite a few more, as part of the Game Pass subscription.

Microsoft cares more about the platform as a whole than forcing players to buy games only through Microsoft services and storefronts these days, and the strategy already seems to be paying off.