Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel has been a total, but successful surprise

Yu Gi Oh Master Duel

Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel has recently released on Steam, and damn, this game was quite the surprise, for a variety of reasons.

Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel, Steam launch

Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel launched out of nowhere on Steam as far as I’m aware, with basically no Inkling it was coming right up until the day Steam simply informed me it was now available.

And how is it doing, on Steam, you might wonder?

Well. Very well, actually. It is at the time of writing, 5th place on the Steam charts with a total of 156k players, being beaten only by the usual Steam juggernauts of CS:GO, DOTA 2, PUBG alongside Apex Legends – which only has around 5k more players. That’s pretty damn impressive, particularly given its beating out the likes of GTAV, TF2 and ARK Survival.

Yu Gi Oh Master Duel Battle field
Credit: Konami, The Click

So, why has the steam launch for Master Duel been so successful thus far?

Well, there are probably a few component pieces to that answer. First of all, naturally, there is the Yu-Gi-Oh brand. How much precisely that is contributing isn’t clear, but it’s certainly some part of it. Following on from that, we also have the fact that there simply haven’t been many notably card games launched lately that breakthrough to any form of casual audience and thus retain their popularity.

Given that Steam notified at least some of its userbase via the occasional new item/sale pop up notifications, it’s safe to say it may be benefitting from a large number of casual players discovering it through that, and then the subsequent coverage of a good launch.

And finally, a personal thought on the matter, it may be retaining these players particularly well, as the game is actually exceedingly generous, doubly so when compared to just about any other virtual card game I can think of in the last year or so.

Login rewards are crazy in Yu Gi Oh Master Duel
Credit: Konami, The Click

These Gems that are shown above? This is the currency used to buy packs in Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel. You earn 1000 just for the first two days you log in, each. 2000 Gems is enough for 20 packs at the standard rate, and even then the store offers discount rate sets of packs, where you can buy 10 fully random packs with a fixed ultra-rare and particularly useful card at the end – such as Solemn Judgement – for only 750.

The Duel pass for the game is only 600 Gems as well, so you can easily buy at least a few of those purely off your first two days of login rewards during this reward campaign, and it’s still running for another 2 months, making the launch a great time to try the game out.

Yu gi oh master duel deck view
Credit: Konami, The Click

Not only that, but you can break cards you don’t want in the deck editing screen and craft different ones quite easily – while card games have definitely done this before, the rate is the key here. Each card of a specific rarity translates to at least 10 of that rarity currency, and 30 of that currency can be used to make any other card of that same rarity. Trashing foil cards or the like will earn the currency faster as well, as an added bonus.

That is pretty generous, certainly by the standards card games usually go by, at any rate. Without spending anything on the game thus far I’m pretty sure I’ve opened the top side of 100 packs at least, and I’ve not done any non-solo content yet. It’s a bit crazy how easily you earn currency in the Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel at the moment, so it’s worth checking out if you’re on the fence.

Is there anything else?

That’s all I wanted to mention for this one, but keep an eye out for more Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel content from me on my author page, as I’ll likely be writing about this game again in the near future. You can also find more of our content on our Homepage.

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