Origins TCG hits 20,000 Steam wishlists during Next Fest as Crimson Cup heads to playoffs

In Brief:

• Origins TCG said it passed 20,000 Steam wishlists during Steam Next Fest and set new records for concurrent players and new installs.
• The team said Origins was the top card game in the festival and drew more than 4,000 simultaneous viewers on its streams.
• Playoffs for the Crimson Cup, a tournament with a $10,000 prize pool built around the Next Fest demo, were due to start the day after the post.

Origins TCG said it has reached 20,000 wishlists on Steam after a week in Steam Next Fest, where it also reported a new concurrent player record and a record number of new installs.

The Koin Games title said in a post on X that it was the top card game in Steam Next Fest. The team didn’t give player counts, install totals or any detail on how the card game ranking was measured.

“What a week!” the Origins TCG account wrote. It also said more than 4,000 people were watching Origins streams at the same time. The post linked to the game’s Twitch channel.

“A big thank you from the whole Origins team, see you for the playoffs tomorrow!” the post said.

Crimson Cup moves to playoffs

Those playoffs belong to the Crimson Cup, the tournament Koin Games scheduled to run alongside the festival from Oct. 20 to 25. The event runs through qualifiers, playoffs and finals, with the last two stages streamed on Twitch over the weekend.

“The tournament has a $10k prize pool, and on top players can win tournament promo cards that will never be re-released,” the studio said in its Steam post opening the festival.

Earlier announcements listed exclusive 1/1 tournament promo cards, digital packs, booster boxes and cash among the prizes. Promo cards start at the Top 32. Content creators received wildcard WC $0.0003238 ▼ -26.6% invites that sent them straight into the playoffs.

On Oct. 5 the studio added two qualifiers for players in other time zones: one for the Americas on Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. EST and one for EMEA on Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. CEST. It also disabled seven locations for tournament balance.

Ranked play and referrals

Origins went into Next Fest, which opened Oct. 19, with Ranked Mode live in its demo. The mode shipped Oct. 15 with a ladder that tops out at Grandmaster. That update also added a new home screen, playmats and reworked missions, and the studio said it fixed about 100 bugs.

“Ranked Mode is finally here! Climb the ladder, earn prizes, and experience the sobering realization that everyone above you is somehow better at this game,” the patch notes said.

Players can climb the demo’s leaderboard for exclusive items during the festival. Koin Games also launched a “Refer a Friend” program in which both the referrer and new recruits earn packs.

A Sept. 29 balance patch, the last before the tournament, added a location rarity system, reworked the card Twister Toss, raised the cost of three cards and added support for 13 languages.

Background

Koin Games develops and publishes Origins. Steam lists the game as free to play, with a Q4 2026 date on its store page. Players take simultaneous turns across three lanes, drawing on a pool of more than 100 rotating locations, and matches last about seven minutes.

The roster reworks historical and legendary figures such as Robin Hood and Mulan. On its store page the studio said all competitive cards are free to earn, while cosmetic variants can be traded on the Steam marketplace.

Before Next Fest the studio ran a string of playtests, including Big Bob’s Playtest Battle on Aug. 28. That event used the Conquest format for the first time, which requires players to bring several different decks and lets opponents ban decks.