The numbers are almost comical. Forza Horizon 6 peaked at 284,139 concurrent players on Steam, according to ActivePlayer.io. Forza Horizon 5 topped out around 80,000. Forza Horizon 4 managed roughly 75,000, per Windows Central. Playground Games didn’t just break the franchise record — they tripled it.

That momentum hasn’t faded much. As of May 31, the game is holding at 162,969 concurrent players and sits at #2 on Steam’s Top Sellers chart. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma confirmed on social media that the early access period was the biggest in series history, and the full launch on May 19 only accelerated things.

The critical reception is equally gaudy. Forza Horizon 6 holds a 92 on Metacritic across 62 reviews, tying it with Forza Horizon 4 and 5 as the franchise’s highest-rated entries. It’s the highest score of 2026 by three full points, clearing Pokemon Pokopia and Resident Evil Requiem, both at 89, according to Forbes. IGN gave it a 10/10, calling it “…the best-looking and best-sounding game Playground has produced to date.” Eurogamer matched with its own perfect score, praising the game’s application of “14 years of series history” with “panache.”

Playground Games has turned Forza Horizon into something genuinely rare: a franchise that delivers at an almost identical critical level every single time. Three consecutive entries at 92. A formula so dialed-in it barely seems to require adjustment.

Strong, Not Sterling

Here’s where the picture gets more complicated. Forza Horizon 6 sits at 87% positive on Steam, drawn from 28,694 reviews — 24,910 positive, 3,784 negative. That’s a “Very Positive” aggregate. By the standards of literally any other racing game on the platform, this is a commanding result.

By the standards of this specific franchise, it’s a whisper below the ceiling. The critic consensus says masterpiece. The player consensus says “yeah, but.” And the “but” has a name: FHE01.

The Crash That Won’t Race

Multiple Steam reviews flag a persistent crash error — coded FHE01 — that appears to strike at random. One player with 9.4 hours logged described the pattern: “Game crashes (FHE01) randomly. There’s no pattern: in the middle of nowhere, in garage, in the menu but never when racing?” They noted stable hardware performance throughout, writing that their “GPU usage is below %60, 60 fps stable.”

The same reviewer also claimed that crash reports submitted through official channels are being deleted — an allegation The Slop News has not independently confirmed. If accurate, it’s the kind of quiet suppression that turns a technical bug into a full-blown narrative problem. If inaccurate, it’s the kind of thing that spreads anyway across Steam review sections, because the crash itself is real enough.

The pattern is genuinely peculiar. Players report stable performance during races — the core activity — and instability during everything else. A racing game that crashes mid-corner would be a catastrophe. A racing game that crashes in the garage is merely an inconvenience. But it’s an inconvenience thousands of players are hitting, and it’s dragging the Steam rating down from the stratosphere into merely excellent territory.

The Formula Holds. The Margins Don’t.

At $69.99, Forza Horizon 6 is priced at the premium tier, and the player counts suggest nobody is blinking. The Japan setting — a fan-requested location for years — has clearly galvanized the audience. Over 550 licensed cars. Cross-platform play between Xbox and PC. A PlayStation 5 version is planned for later this year, which should push the total player base even higher.

Windows Central reports the launch peak is likely the highest ever recorded for a racing game on Steam — and given the margin over previous franchise entries, that claim is credible. ActivePlayer.io now puts the all-time peak at 284,139.

Playground Games has built something remarkable: a biennial event that critics adore, players buy in record numbers, and competitors still can’t match. The question isn’t whether the studio can build a great racing game. Three straight 92s say they can. The question is whether they can maintain that standard across every layer of the experience — menus, stability, the connective tissue between races — or whether those edges continue to fray.

At 87%, the answer right now is: almost.

Sources