Umamusume: Pretty Derby has run its way into rare company on Steam, cracking the top 10 most-played sports games list. It didn’t do it with football stars or basketball legends, but with a cast of anime horse girls instead. Yeah, you read that right.
In a space usually dominated by sports sims and management titles, it’s a genuine curveball to see Cygames’ free-to-play racer sitting beside games like EA FC 26 and Football Manager 26.
Cracking The Most-Played Charts
Operation Sports App
Your ultimate companion for sports gaming. Access in-depth coverage, thoughtful discussion, and a community built around the games—and sports—you love.
Your ultimate sports gaming companion.
Numbers don’t lie, and according to SteamDB data, Umamusume: Pretty Derby has pushed past the likes of eFootball and NBA 2K26 in the sports category. It’s pulling in daily peaks well into the high teens of thousands, and its all-time concurrent record sits at roughly 87,000 players on Steam.
That puts it in the same ballpark as established titles like Football Manager 26, which peaked just under 85,000 players recently. It’s not that far behind EA SPORTS FC 26 either, which peaked at around an astonishing 100,000 players mark.
What’s really surprising is how quickly Umamusume ditched its “niche import” status. The series started as a mobile sensation in Japan. However, once the global PC release dropped with a major content update and in-game events, it gained real traction. Big-name streamers and VTubers jumped in, and every time they did, you could see the player count spike, mirroring viewer numbers.
The Sports Genre
Umamusume’s rise simply signals just how broad the sports genre has become. On the same charts where people grind Career Mode in EA FC, or obsess over tactics in Football Manager, you’ve now got tens of thousands training anime horse girls, chasing rare gacha pulls, and racing to top the leaderboards.
It also underlines how “sports games” on Steam aren’t just about photorealistic stadiums or official licenses. Games with character-driven takes and out-of-the-box ideas can hold their own, too. If the trend keeps up, fans who usually only care about the traditional sports titles might have to clear some space for one of the weirdest and most successful sports games of 2025.
Published: Dec 15, 2025 02:00 pm