Civ5 has sold approximately 5.84 million copies

Quintillus

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I saw an interesting article on Arstechnica today, where they go into Valve's Steam sales number. The Civ5 community will likely be interested, since Civ5 is in many of the most-played charts. Interesting findings:

- Civ5 has sold approximately 5.84 million copies
- 5.4 million of those purchases have resulted in at least 0.1 hours of playtime
- 743 million hours of Civ5 have been logged (not including offline mode, but including when the game is left up and isn't actually being played). This is 5th-highest of any Steam game.
- The median Civ5 owner has logged 29 hours of playtime
- The mean Civ5 owner has logged 127.3 hours of playtime

None of the other Civ games show up in the charts, which isn't particularly surprising as a large portion of their sales are likely non-Steam purchases. By comparison, some web searches indicate that, according to Take Two, as of March, 2008, Civ 4 had sold 3 million copies. I haven't found a reliable source for a more recent date than that.
 
I came on board with BNW so I was not burdened with the abysmal state of vanilla. Thus, Civ 5 is an awesome game for me. Being a SMAC player the learning curve wasn't that steep.

I assume it will be the same for Rome II in a few years. Some kid will get it with all the DLCs and expansions and be wowed by it, while those of us who spent money on launch will sort of remember it.
 
I saw an interesting article on Arstechnica today, where they go into Valve's Steam sales number. The Civ5 community will likely be interested, since Civ5 is in many of the most-played charts. Interesting findings:

- Civ5 has sold approximately 5.84 million copies
- 5.4 million of those purchases have resulted in at least 0.1 hours of playtime
- 743 million hours of Civ5 have been logged (not including offline mode, but including when the game is left up and isn't actually being played). This is 5th-highest of any Steam game.
- The median Civ5 owner has logged 29 hours of playtime
- The mean Civ5 owner has logged 127.3 hours of playtime

None of the other Civ games show up in the charts, which isn't particularly surprising as a large portion of their sales are likely non-Steam purchases. By comparison, some web searches indicate that, according to Take Two, as of March, 2008, Civ 4 had sold 3 million copies. I haven't found a reliable source for a more recent date than that.

Nice amount of sales, those playtime numbers are pretty normal.

A lot of people buy games (myself included) and basicly never play them.

Still brings in money for the company though.
 
I would have guessed that alot of copies went unplayed, thanks to those awesome Steam sales...but I would never have guessed THAT many...makes me kind of sad to be honest.
 
I also have many games which just purchased and never played or played for less than an hour. Anyway, sold number is quite good and I hope this number gives courage to the Team for Civ 6.
 
I also have many games which just purchased and never played or played for less than an hour. Anyway, sold number is quite good and I hope this number gives courage to the Team for Civ 6.

Dear Team,

Please make Civ VI less annoying.

Thank you.
 
To be honest I am astonished by the fact this game sold so good. Come on, this is strategy game :D

Though rather about something like... 2 millions...
 
I would have guessed that alot of copies went unplayed, thanks to those awesome Steam sales...but I would never have guessed THAT many...makes me kind of sad to be honest.

Actually, I thought that the amount played was quite good. 5.4 million out of 5.84 million is 92.5% - so only 7.5% are purchased but never played. There's a follow-up piece today that clarifies that for games released after Steam began tracking hours, 26.5% of copies are unplayed. So Civ5 is actually quite a bit ahead of average in that regard.

To be honest I am astonished by the fact this game sold so good. Come on, this is strategy game :D

Though rather about something like... 2 millions...

It's a bit higher than I expected, too. However, if Civ4 sold 3 million by early 2008, my guess is Civ4 is probably at least double that by now between sales before Civ5 came out, and sales at a discount since then.

Other strategy titles in the top 100 (see the follow-up piece) are, in order (by copies sold):

- Empire: Total War, 2.68 million
- Shogun 2 Total War, 2.04 million
- Napoleon: Total War, 1.60 million
- Rome 2 Total War, 1.23 million
- Age of Empires II HD, 1.17 million

There may be a couple more in there released pre-2009 that have lots of copies sold, but not as many players playing since 2009. And of course, games that aren't Steam-exclusive, including most older games, are (probably significantly) underrepresented.
 
Given this number is just how many accounts have Civ5, it wouldn't indicate the sales of G&K, BNW & any DLC. Adding those on would be quite a significant boost to Civ5-related sales.
 
So, basically, Civ V is the second most successful non-Valve game on Steam, behind only Skyrim. That's enormous and, honestly, quite surprising. I never imagined it's this popular. It fares even better in hours played, coming up on fifth place, only behind 4 giants: DOTA 2, TF 2, and the 2 popular versions of CounterStrike.

I'd say this is a VERY god thing, showing how strong turn based strategy games can be and ensuring that the series is secure.
 
Actually, I thought that the amount played was quite good. 5.4 million out of 5.84 million is 92.5% - so only 7.5% are purchased but never played. There's a follow-up piece today that clarifies that for games released after Steam began tracking hours, 26.5% of copies are unplayed. So Civ5 is actually quite a bit ahead of average in that regard.

Doh! I misread what you originally posted...I read it as 5.4 million went UNPLAYED!

I am not sad anymore!
 
Given this number is just how many accounts have Civ5, it wouldn't indicate the sales of G&K, BNW & any DLC. Adding those on would be quite a significant boost to Civ5-related sales.

That's true - this is Vanilla. If you own the expansions on Steam, do they show up as separate games, or not? I know in Civ4, they all show up as separate, so if Civ5 were the same you could see how many sales each expansion had. But a lot of games, particularly ones with DLC in addition to expansions, only get one entry for the base game + expansions, so you couldn't break it down and see how many sales each expansion has. I suspect Civ5 does the latter, but I only own the base game myself.

@Quintillus

Where can I find the whole list? I mean top 100.

Page two of the follow-up article.

Is this counting expansion sales as a new sale or is this just base Civ5 units sold?

This is the base game, including when the base game is sold as as a bundle with expansions (such as the Gold Edition and Complete Edition). But the Gold/Complete editions still only count as 1 copy here.

Doh! I misread what you originally posted...I read it as 5.4 million went UNPLAYED!

I am not sad anymore!

:lol: That does make a big difference!
 
I'd say this is a VERY god thing, showing how strong turn based strategy games can be and ensuring that the series is secure.
Perhaps it also suggests that putting the game on Steam was a wise move, since the ease of download, combined with Steam's audience base, exposed the game to many players who never would have considered it, otherwise.
 
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