GROUND BRANCH
Skip · Shooter · 2026
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $29.99.
- Reviews
- 85% positive
Recent reviews trending down: 31% over the last 30 days against 85% all-time.
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Minimum on the Steam store: 16 GB of memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB, 40 GB of storage. Windows only.
From one of the developers behind the original Rainbow Six® and Ghost Recon® games, comes a thinking-man's first-person shooter featuring in-depth character and weapon customization. Take your time. Think ahead. Get the job done.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
- How long it takes to beat isn't in our data. The score is docked for the missing length.
The value story
June 2019 is where it bottomed out, at $14.99. Its cuts run 25 percent off as a rule. There have been 28 in the 8 years tracked, about 12 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 4 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 12 weeks.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 47 percent on value. It is pricier than 91 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 70 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Call to Arms ($3.74, scores 56) beats it on value, while it beats Day of Infamy ($14.99, scores 36).
Players rate it 85 percent positive over its lifetime, but the last 30 days run 31 percent. Something recent has soured the room. Of the 800 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 9 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written July 2026 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 62 percent of the 1,957 reviews written there were positive, against 85 percent overall, and those are 9 percent of everything written about it.
Players
349 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic), achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
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GROUND BRANCH scores 41/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). Length is not in our data, so the score is docked. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/16900/ground-branchThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 5, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.