Stupid Never Dies launches today, October 21, on PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam, and it arrives with the most divided review spread of the autumn. The 3D action RPG roguelite from GPTRACK50, the studio founded by veteran producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi, unlocks on Steam at 22:00 UTC today, priced at $49.99 for the Standard Edition and $59.99 for the Glorious Idiot Edition. Critics have scored it anywhere from 9/10 to 3/10; the players who paid to start two days early are rating it near 78% positive.
At a glance
Launch: October 21, 2026 on PS5 and Steam; Steam unlocks at 22:00 UTC on October 21 (06:00 on October 22 in Beijing); Japan follows on October 22
Prices: Standard Edition $49.99; Glorious Idiot Edition $59.99, including the TickTock Teddies pack, sold separately at $15.00
Advance Access: Glorious Idiot owners have been playing since October 19 at 22:00 UTC
Review aggregates at launch: Metacritic 65 on PS5 (22 reviews) and 66 on PC (10 reviews); OpenCritic 70 with 57% of 36 critics recommending
Steam players so far: about 78% positive on SteamDB’s latest reading, from the small advance-access pool; a free First Bite demo is on Steam
Developer GPTRACK50 Inc., listed as developer and publisher on Steam, with SEGA handling worldwide publishing and distribution; 22 GB install; Steam Deck Verified
The averages hide the fight
Start with the spread, because the averages alone mislead. CGMagazine scored the game 9/10 and PSX Brasil 85/100, with TechRaptor and IGN Italy at 8/10. The middle is crowded with 7s, from Push Square, Shacknews, RPG Site, DualShockers and TheSixthAxis among others. The floor drops out at the far end: Gamer Social Club gave 50, Metro GameCentral gave 30, and Polygon published an unscored review under a headline calling it the worst game of
2026. On PS5, the 22 Metacritic reviews split into 9 positive, 10 mixed and 3 negative.
The praise clusters in the same places: the punk-pop art direction and late-90s energy, the soundtrack, and the Style Eat system, where Davy eats the cores of beaten monsters and transforms. The complaints cluster just as tightly. Repetition across dungeon runs is the most repeated charge, then combat precision: IGN Italy flagged the missing lock-on and short-range parry, PSX Brasil noted targeting stumbles, and GamerFocus pointed to the camera and a pile-up of currencies. This game has to survive both lists at once, which is why the scores scatter.
How the game is built
Davy is a timid zombie at the bottom of monster society, running a monster-ruled dungeon to revive Julia, a human girl found frozen. Each run starts him at level 1, and growth carries between runs through a rising growth rate, the loop called Blazing Fast Growth. Eating cores grants 11 Style transformations, including Werewolf, Vampire and Harpy forms, each changing how he fights. Between runs, Over Technology parts rebuild his arms, legs and head at the home-base mall. The game is single-player only, needs 22 GB, is Steam Deck Verified, and ships with English voice acting plus subtitles in 13 languages.
The editions are simple, and the clock matters today. The $59.99 Glorious Idiot Edition adds the TickTock Teddies: Nonsense Overload Pack, which sells on its own for $15.00, and it carried the 48-hour Advance Access window that opened on October
19. Standard owners unlock at 22:00 UTC today, which is already October 22 in Japan and in Beijing, matching the staggered regional dates on the official product information. Both editions are on sale at unlock, and the premium tier buys content and cosmetics rather than a different game.
Players are warmer than critics, on a small sample
Steam’s early returns come from the Advance Access pool, where everyone paid a premium to start early. GamerFuzion counted 31 of 41 Steam reviews positive on October 20, about 76%, and SteamDB’s latest reading puts the share at 78%. Read that as a mood check from the friendliest audience, in dozens rather than thousands. The free First Bite demo is the safer test: it covers the opening hours on Steam and PS5, and PlayStation’s September demo announcement said progress carries into the full game. If the demo’s rhythm works for you, the full game is more of exactly that, repetition included.
Our take
This is a taste test disguised as a review score. The critics who bounced off it and the critics who loved it describe the same game: loud, fast, visually relentless, loose in the hands and happy to repeat itself. The 65 and 70 aggregates are what you get when a strong flavour meets a divided room. Play First Bite for an hour; it is free, and it contains every strength and flaw the reviews argue about. If you come out grinning, $49.99 for the Standard Edition is the buy, and the Glorious Idiot premium can wait. If the camera and the missing lock-on annoy you in the demo, no patch has been announced, so wait for a sale and judge it again then.