Player stats, sales, and reception discussion

[protocol7]

The old thread seems gone, so here's a new one to discuss following along the stats, sales, and reception. To kick things off with some numbers, here's the latest player numbers on Steam:

6,395 players at the moment, which I guess is an all-time low (though as others have said, you'd expect it to be on a downward trajectory for lack of any recent updates, and also my morning is always at the trough). In honor of the last thread (pour one out for the homies, I'll miss the ironic thread title), for comparison War Thunder is at 32,961 players right now and that game is actually on an upward trajectory of players. Civ7 is no longer on the Steam top 100, but Civ5 (#88) and Civ6 (#36) still are. Before the thread was deleted, someone had just posted some mobile/console numbers and although I remember they weren't good, I don't have access to that link any more. Maybe someone else does and can re-share. I believe the crashes are mostly fixed there, but they still have to experience the game totally mod-free.

Next patch comes out next week (https://civilization.2k.com/civ-vii/news/civ-vii-update-check-in-apr-8/ and Firaxis lists the main highlights as changing the way resources work, changing the way food is calculated for growth, the ability to keep playing after the end of the game, and teams multiplayer. Right to Rule (next expansion) was moved to later in the summer. It will be interesting to see if these updates are just what fans were looking for to give the game another try. It's not exactly what I would have picked as the most pressing, but they have access to information I don't.

 

[protocol7]

As far as reviews, here's the latest Google audience reviews:

And here's the recent review trend on SteamDB. Although there's more negative than positive reviews still, the absolute numbers are so small that they don't really move the overall %. It goes down like 0.10 percent per week recently.

And all time:

 

[Naokaukodem]

For what it's worth, my daily french video game site didn't have a lot of comments for Civ7 news, or even test. I think it's the first time I don't see a single comment for the test of a new Civ release in that site. One could argue that the site is dying, because it has been sold to a ethically (not) debatable policy society (basically they buy sites and paper magazines, fire half the staff and sell it the same price - the staff of the video game site I refer to just resigned after hearing the news, so a new staff had to be hired) but it still has some hot news with 200+ messages so I guess that Civ7 didn't have quite all the hype than its predecessors in that site.

[3615 My Life :]

As to me I received my PS5 copy a few days ago (40 € shipping costs included, new in blister pack) and played a little bit with Amina ? on level 2 difficulty level. Currently I got 8 settlements out of 4, I guess that's because of the low difficulty but I do think that this cap should scale up with difficulty. I have +0 happiness and don't really understand how to get more. My capital is size 20 and will now grow in 50+ turns ! even if I spammed farms and fishing boats. I conquered one city with 1 warrior, had another one from the same foe in a peace deal (now he has 1 city left only) I conquered 1-3 (including one in a peace deal) Machiavel's Rome cities with a little army, but he showed up some resistance at the end hence I signed the peace treaty. I have two producing cities, my capital obviously but also the only other city I founded, costed me 200 gold. Despite the tutorial explanations, I don't quite catch what are the benefits of the "Communes" (settlements that don't produce) or what really changes when you specialize them. I thought that when you specialize them all their food goes to connected other cities, but I recently annexed a city state I was suzerain of, it was connected to my capital and the growth in there jumped from 40+ to 50+ turns. I don't get it. There is lot of "clicks" when it comes to units, and the generals ability to gather troops sounds not that fantastic, even for QoL purposes. I have two of them, I don't know if their abilities stack. Good news : the music is not invasive and quite nice. But those mechanics man... quite confused for now. And yet, I just entered the first phase of the Antiquity crises ! (picked the CS policy, lol i have none)

 

[stealth_nsk]

The recent link on PS5 player data is here: https://www.truetrophies.com/news/civilization-vii-ps5-ps4-launch-player-count

Although this chart leaves more questions than answers. No absolute numbers, no explanation of which actual metric is used, no info on how the data was gathered. Add to this that this chart only covers first several days of the game launch and that it's the only site which speaks about problems of Civ7 on consoles.

I'd still keep it as "Civilization 7 on consoles probably launched not so great as we thought", but hard to get any more information from the article.

 

[itix]

A low number of new reviews indicates a low number of sales. I believe hope Firaxis is pursuing this issue with its Right to Rule expansion and adding more content than planned.

 

[itix]

The recent link on PS5 player data is here: https://www.truetrophies.com/news/civilization-vii-ps5-ps4-launch-player-count

Although this chart leaves more questions than answers. No absolute numbers, no explanation of which actual metric is used, no info on how the data was gathered. Add to this that this chart only covers first several days of the game launch and that it's the only site which speaks about problems of Civ7 on consoles.

I'd still keep it as "Civilization 7 on consoles probably launched not so great as we thought", but hard to get any more information from the article.

That article is a typical link farm article. Civ 7 was on position #125 and the rest of the article was padded with lorem ipsum.

However, the first week is always the best for sales and player count. I find it hard to believe it would have improved later on. We can also conclude console sales were not depriving PC sales.

 

[stealth_nsk]

That article is a typical link farm article. Civ 7 was on position #125 and the rest of the article was padded with lorem ipsum.

However, the first week is always the best for sales and player count. I find it hard to believe it would have improved later on. We can also conclude console sales were not depriving PC sales.

One of the problems here is that the article is unclear which metric it uses. It looks like it somehow represent player number, but not sales (see below).

For example, you could look at this article https://www.pushsquare.com/news/202...ilization-7-sells-best-on-ps5-in-strong-debut
In the same first week, Civ7 was the second game in UK sales on PS. This article at least has clear metrics, but also lacks absolute numbers.

The conflict data between articles could be partially explained by difference in UK vs. other markets sales (as far as I know, Japan is still the biggest market for PS and they prefer local titles), plus the other effects we've spoken in our discussions about Steam - new game is sold at full price, while there are older titles, which were sold with discounts at some point, and thus having large player base.

 

[Marla_Singer]

The conflict data between articles could be partially explained by difference in UK vs. other markets sales (as far as I know, Japan is still the biggest market for PS and they prefer local titles), plus the other effects we've spoken in our discussions about Steam - new game is sold at full price, while there are older titles, which were sold with discounts at some point, and thus having large player base.

Japan is totally dominated by Nintendo. According to Famitsu website, 35 million Switch's were sold in Japan and only 8.5 million PS5's.

Famitsu publishes weekly sales figures with number of games sold by console in the country (PC games aren't counted). Civilization VII only appeared once on its release week (3370 units sold on Switch, 3029 units sold on PS5):

Famitsu Sales: 2/10/25 – 2/16/25 [Update]

Famitsu has published its estimated physical game software data for Japan for the week of February 10, 2025 to February 16, 2025.

www.gematsu.com

It was already gone the week after, meaning less than 1000 units sold per console. But this doesn't really tell much frankly as it's limited to Japan and we don't have any PC sales figures to compare.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

The old thread seems gone, so here's a new one to discuss following along the stats, sales, and reception. To kick things off with some numbers, here's the latest player numbers on Steam:

View attachment 729052

6,395 players at the moment, which I guess is an all-time low (though as others have said, you'd expect it to be on a downward trajectory for lack of any recent updates, and also my morning is always at the trough). In honor of the last thread (pour one out for the homies, I'll miss the ironic thread title), for comparison War Thunder is at 32,961 players right now and that game is actually on an upward trajectory of players. Civ7 is no longer on the Steam top 100, but Civ5 (#88) and Civ6 (#36) still are. Before the thread was deleted, someone had just posted some mobile/console numbers and although I remember they weren't good, I don't have access to that link any more. Maybe someone else does and can re-share. I believe the crashes are mostly fixed there, but they still have to experience the game totally mod-free.

Next patch comes out next week (https://civilization.2k.com/civ-vii/news/civ-vii-update-check-in-apr-8/ and Firaxis lists the main highlights as changing the way resources work, changing the way food is calculated for growth, the ability to keep playing after the end of the game, and teams multiplayer. Right to Rule (next expansion) was moved to later in the summer. It will be interesting to see if these updates are just what fans were looking for to give the game another try. It's not exactly what I would have picked as the most pressing, but they have access to information I don't.

Thank you for this - I was enjoying that thread a lot and was upset it was removed. I legitimately thought Firaxis asked it be taken down or something.

It now seems like the other thread “is Civ 7 the most boring..” has also mysteriously disappeared.

 

[Marla_Singer]

It now seems like the other thread “is Civ 7 the most boring..” has also mysteriously disappeared.

The thread is still there, it only slippêd on page 2:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/is-civ-vii-most-boring-version.697227/

 

[Askia Muhammad]

The thread is still there:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/is-civ-vii-most-boring-version.697227/

Thanks - seems it was a glitch on my end

 

[queenpea]

Do we think they’ve sold a million copies yet?

 

[Askia Muhammad]

Do we think they’ve sold a million copies yet?

Between console VR and PC, I’d guess they probably have but I don’t have any data to back that up.

Hitting some 6,500 some players as a low is pretty disheartening though if they did sell a million copies… that would mean less than 1% of people playing who purchased

 

[stealth_nsk]

Do we think they’ve sold a million copies yet?

I tried to get any information to base on, but there's zero. The only way people without internal data access could answer this question now is based on whether they personally like the game or not.

 

[queenpea]

I tried to get any information to base on, but there's zero. The only way people without internal data access could answer this question now is based on whether they personally like the game or not.

Well there are estimates, right? I don’t think any of those show copies over a million. I would think that Firaxis would have told us if they sold over a million as developers and publishers tend to enjoy “spiking the football” this way.

 

[UWHabs]

SteamDB has the estimates at around 1m units sold. Dunno how good those estimators are, what kind of error bars exist on those numbers. That would be steam-only too, not counting console or other sales.

 

[protocol7]

I tried to get any information to base on, but there's zero. The only way people without internal data access could answer this question now is based on whether they personally like the game or not.

I like the game enough, but also don't think it's doing well in the market, so I don't think one automatically follows from the other.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Well there are estimates, right? I don’t think any of those show copies over a million. I would think that Firaxis would have told us if they sold over a million as developers and publishers tend to enjoy “spiking the football” this way.

Estimates need to be based on something and there are too many variables to consider. The number is surely between 100K (based on 20K reviews on Steam alone, that's absolute bottom line) and 10M (Civ6 sold more than 11M with expansions, Civ7 clearly should be below this by now), but anything more specific without internal information is a wild guess.

The argument that Firaxis would report 1M sales is as weak as others. Sometimes companies report such numbers immediately, sometimes they don't.

EDIT: I've just looked and all-time peak of simultaneous Steam players is 85K. So, it's pretty safe to put bottom line at about 200K considering time zones and other platforms.

 

[AD1730]

SteamDB has the estimates at around 1m units sold. Dunno how good those estimators are, what kind of error bars exist on those numbers. That would be steam-only too, not counting console or other sales.

If you assume that the average sale price is $80 (when you take the regular and deluxe versions) and 1m units sold, that corresponds to ~ $61,000,000 to the developer once you take Valve's share out. That's without adjusting for regional pricing, currency conversion, etc., which is very difficult to gauge with the information we have access to.

 

[queenpea]

The argument that Firaxis would report 1M sales is as weak as others. Sometimes companies report such numbers immediately, sometimes they don't.

Yeah I really don’t know. It seems like companies love to celebrate hitting sales targets whenever they can.