Brotato is back inside Steam's top 100 most-played games after All Pain No Gain gave the arena roguelite a harder ceiling for veteran players to chase.
In Gamers Now's 17:50 UTC reading of Steam's public most-played chart on May 15, Brotato ranked No. 99 with 8,724 players in-game. That is 43 places higher than its weekly comparison, while its weekly peak for the current rollup is 12,807 players.
The move also has useful short-term context. Brotato's live count in the same Steam reading was up from 5,529 in the latest prior-day comparison and above the game's recent multi-day readings. For a 2023 roguelite sitting below Steam's usual free-to-play giants, that is enough movement to make the update's timing stand out.
All Pain No Gain gives Brotato veterans a new wall
The player lift follows the free All Pain No Gain update, which Blobfish detailed in an official Steam announcement on May 12. The update adds Nightmare difficulty, new enemies tied to that difficulty, the Wounded as a new character, the Rail Gun as a new weapon, two achievements, quality-of-life changes and a long balance pass.
Nightmare is the main hook. Blobfish says the mode sits above Danger 5, with enemies dealing more damage, gaining more health and moving faster. It also adds environmental projectile events and fog waves, both aimed at players already comfortable with Brotato's hardest base-game runs.
The new unlock path is built for that audience. Nightmare opens after 10 Danger 5 wins on different characters, or different maps for players who own the Abyssal Terrors DLC. Beating Nightmare unlocks the Wounded, a glass-cannon character who dies in one hit, starts with a Tardigrade and removes defense-focused items from shops and crates. Winning with the Wounded then unlocks the Rail Gun.
Why Brotato's Steam return stands out
Brotato's Steam store page describes it as a top-down arena shooter roguelite about a potato fighting alien waves with up to six weapons at a time. Runs are short, builds can swing wildly and the game already had a reputation for pushing players toward repeated difficulty clears.
That matters for this chart move because All Pain No Gain is not a cosmetic refresh or a small hotfix. It gives experienced Brotato players a concrete reason to return, then ties the new character and weapon to the harder mode. The update is aimed at exactly the part of the audience most likely to come back for another run.
Brotato is still near the bottom of Steam's top 100, not suddenly competing with the platform's biggest daily fixtures. The sharper point is that it has returned to the visible part of the chart during a week already crowded with launches, live-service updates and other lower-chart movements. Gamers Now's latest weekly Steam chart coverage showed update-led games making noise below the usual leaders, and Brotato now fits that same pattern in a smaller, more roguelite-specific way.
The next Steam check will show whether All Pain No Gain has more than a weekend of momentum. For now, the update has done enough to pull Brotato back into the top 100 and put its new Nightmare run in front of a wider PC audience.