Civ sales figures revealed

Camikaze

Administrator
Administrator
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
27,335
Location
Sydney
During the last week, some sales figures for the Civilization series, and Civ5 in particular, have come to light. During their PAX East Mega Panel, Firaxis revealed that the Civilization-series has sold 21 million copies throughout its history. It is unclear whether this number includes expansions or simply the base games. Meanwhile, an Ars Technica article has revealed that 5.84 million copies of Civ5 are owned on Steam, making it the 16th most-owned game on Steam. It is unlikely that this number includes the Gods & Kings and Brave New World expansions, as both these expansions are treated as DLC on the one Civ5 launcher. Further analysis is even more encouraging for Civ5, with many of the games higher on the list being owned by a high proportion of people who have not played at least six minutes. Whereas Portal, for example, is owned by 7.4 million people, of whom 5 million have actually played the game, 5.4 million of Civ5's 5.84 million owners have played the game. This makes Civ5 the 8th most played game on Steam by number of people. Civ5 climbs to 5th in total hours played, with 743 million. The mean number of hours per owner for Civ5 is 127.3 hours.

For more details and graphs, see the Ars Technica article >>> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gauge-ars-reveals-steams-most-popular-games/
Watch the PAX East Mega Panel >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llownjzhy_4
Discussion in the Civ5 forums >>> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=524507
 
It's worth noting that games that were released prior to March 2009 (including Portal) will have an inflated number of people who've bought the game but not played it. That's because Steam only started tracking time played in March 2009, and thus anyone who played the game prior to that but not since then will not count as having played the game.

The 21 million total figure is interesting. It does make a big difference whether that includes expansions or not - it's hard to really do many comparisons without knowing that.
 
I'm a junkie—911 hours.

Goodness knows how many I'll rack up when CivBE gets released; I have hundreds on SMAC/X.

Slightly sad, but you're never alone when you own Civ.
 
Interesting information there as I have always wondered what the numbers were. I've played the entire series and enjoyed every one of them, Civ V being my favorite to date. And as far as "junkie" status goes for time played in CiV alone I am at 3385 hours.

Is there a scale or rating system (for fun) on hours played = badge of honor/shame?

:D
 
I'm sure people on this forum have contributed generously to the hours played statistics. I wonder what the distribution of players to time played would look like, and how many standard deviations from norm the average Civfanatics member would be on such a statistical analysis.
 
Further analysis is even more encouraging for Civ5, with many of the games higher on the list being owned by a high proportion of people who have not played at least six minutes. Whereas Portal, for example, is owned by 7.4 million people, of whom 5 million have actually played the game, 5.4 million of Civ5's 5.84 million owners have played the game. This makes Civ5 the 8th most played game on Steam by number of people.
Considering the fact that appr. 25% of c5 "players" haven't got the most basic achievements like "founding second city" or "promoting an unit" or "finding a ruin" I wonder about the 5.4 million players...
 
Considering the fact that appr. 25% of c5 "players" haven't got the most basic achievements like "founding second city" or "promoting an unit" or "finding a ruin" I wonder about the 5.4 million players...

Achievements are disabled when you play with mods. I know in my case, I played one or two games with G&K and BNW when they released and then moved on to mods, so I'm probably missing quite a few achievements that I've actually made but haven't been counted. A good proportion of the achievement-less people probably dive straight into mods.
 
Achievements are disabled when you play with mods. I know in my case, I played one or two games with G&K and BNW when they released and then moved on to mods, so I'm probably missing quite a few achievements that I've actually made but haven't been counted. A good proportion of the achievement-less people probably dive straight into mods.

Sure, but a good many players probably have Civ 5 in their backlog of shame. Almost all of my Civ 5 hours logged have involved me modding or testing mods, and I still have managed to get 21 achievements from playing around with vanilla occasionally.
 
Top Bottom