Edit: Civ VI was the intended reference.
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Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread
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Edit: Civ VI was the intended reference.
I'd like to know how they get their numbers. That seems way too high for IV. It's not even on sale now.
TylertheDestroyer
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They outline their methodology on their website.
gamalytic.com
Also while I personally don't put much stock in estimates sites like this, I will point out that Steam's summer sale just ended and Epic games is currently having a sale where the game was free to play and you can pick up the entire VI collection for $10. It's not totally unreasonable that the game which has nearly 4x as many average players at any given moment and regularly goes on sale still has comparable number of unit sales to its flop of a sequel, which is sitting at an overwhelmingly negative user review score and only 5k players.
How to accurately estimate Steam game sales
An overview of Steam game prices, sales, ratings and much more!
gamalytic.com
Also while I personally don't put much stock in estimates sites like this, I will point out that Steam's summer sale just ended and Epic games is currently having a sale where the game was free to play and you can pick up the entire VI collection for $10. It's not totally unreasonable that the game which has nearly 4x as many average players at any given moment and regularly goes on sale still has comparable number of unit sales to its flop of a sequel, which is sitting at an overwhelmingly negative user review score and only 5k players.
Did you mistype the game in your previous post? You said that IV was selling 1.5K per week, not VI.They outline their methodology on their website.
How to accurately estimate Steam game sales
An overview of Steam game prices, sales, ratings and much more!
Also while I personally don't put much stock in estimates sites like this, I will point out that Steam's summer sale just ended and Epic games is currently having a sale where the game was free to play and you can pick up the entire VI collection for $10. It's not totally unreasonable that the game which has nearly 4x as many average players at any given moment and regularly goes on sale still has comparable number of unit sales to its flop of a sequel, which is sitting at an overwhelmingly negative user review score and only 5k players.
TylertheDestroyer
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oh crap i didn't even notice I mistyped VI as IV, sorry I meant to use 6 as the reference.
IV obviously is not a thousand copies a week lol
That is good question. I think it is low.
I could remember to games released at the same time:
Monster Hunter Wilds - 8.6k
Kingdom Comes: Deliverance II - 7.9k
I am on my phone now and didn't check if they are on sale atm.
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Some quick maths:
3,000 copies a week at $70 is $210,000 a week. Let's be generous and assume half of their sales are on steam, and half on other devices, so $420,000 a week.
That would make $21,320,000 a year.
According to chatgpt (so pinch of salt) steam (and other vendors presumably) get a 30% cut, and then publishers take about 2/3rds of the remainder.
So after those cuts that would leave around $5mil
According to chatgpt based of Firaxis' employee counts, their likely annual costs are in the region of $40-45mil
So they need about 8 times their current rate of sales to break even, but probably broke even for the current year from their initial steam launch sales alone at least. Theres the development costs ahead of this year still to catch up on of course, and ongoing costs too., but there's also supposed to be sale periods and new dlc that bump revenue. Hasn't worked with the first DLC pack and sale that way though...
3,000 copies a week at $70 is $210,000 a week. Let's be generous and assume half of their sales are on steam, and half on other devices, so $420,000 a week.
That would make $21,320,000 a year.
According to chatgpt (so pinch of salt) steam (and other vendors presumably) get a 30% cut, and then publishers take about 2/3rds of the remainder.
So after those cuts that would leave around $5mil
According to chatgpt based of Firaxis' employee counts, their likely annual costs are in the region of $40-45mil
So they need about 8 times their current rate of sales to break even, but probably broke even for the current year from their initial steam launch sales alone at least. Theres the development costs ahead of this year still to catch up on of course, and ongoing costs too., but there's also supposed to be sale periods and new dlc that bump revenue. Hasn't worked with the first DLC pack and sale that way though...
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stealth_nsk
Deity
With initial estimation of 1M copies sold on presale and first days, that adds about 75K copies by now. Less than 10% of postsales compared to initial sales
Exactly, most big games cant survive on selling base only, DLCs are included in the business model, that's why Firaxis invests so much in breaking the hate train.
King Flevance
Deity
A few issues though is that the game is $60, not $70 at full price. so that is actually only $180,000 a week. But also, if it goes on sale on Steam for $5 during the 4 Steam Sales throughout the year and that low price entices 156k sales over the course of a year, that would average out to 3k per week. 100k averages out to 1.9k sales a week. If most of those sales are at that $5 sale price they commonly like to entice with in Steam sales, that $210,000 falls to a simple $15,000. $21,320,000 a year falls to $780,000 a year.
This is probably why the DLC model is so popular. Most people will buy in to the base game at low price but many will often spend an additional ~$30-40 on DLCs if they like it. Additionally, there are many consumers that will spend $90 on the bundle if a big (-60%) is next to the price tag as this makes many people feel that is the best value, and it makes them feel like they got a deal. This makes me wonder how many of those 3k sales are on DLCs, not just the base game also.
youngsteve
King
I think one of the main causes for this game being marked so low on Steam, is Steams fault regarding their refund policy. This I think is true of all games. All games nowadays are quite complicated, none more so than stategy games, & having two hours to play to make a decision is frankly ridiculous. As most of you know it takes 100's of hours to really understand certain games & any faults they may have, which obviously a person doesn't have to make a decision. This is hardly the 1980's & 90's when games were more simplified & easy to discover whether it was good or bad for you.
I think if you extended the refund policy to say 10 hours, that would give people more time to make an opinion on whether a game was for them or not. I expect if this was true the rating of this game would be a lot higher on Steam, as it would take out angry customers, who were stuck with something they hate, & in frustration take it out by marking it low & giving a negative review as the only recourse they have being lumbered with a costly purchase they hate & don't want. I must admit I cannot remember the last time I had a game I didn't want (probably Civ 6 in 2017, which was for different reasons) as the information available in diaries, videos, reviews & playthrougths on places like youtube should give you all information you need whether a game is for you or not. Unfortunately many people are more impulsive & don't do that & just buy things, but unfortunately usually to late when they realise game is not for them.
I am not a fan of this game, but I do feel if people are given more time to review something before having a refund would help all sectors of the gaming industry not just the customers.
I think if you extended the refund policy to say 10 hours, that would give people more time to make an opinion on whether a game was for them or not. I expect if this was true the rating of this game would be a lot higher on Steam, as it would take out angry customers, who were stuck with something they hate, & in frustration take it out by marking it low & giving a negative review as the only recourse they have being lumbered with a costly purchase they hate & don't want. I must admit I cannot remember the last time I had a game I didn't want (probably Civ 6 in 2017, which was for different reasons) as the information available in diaries, videos, reviews & playthrougths on places like youtube should give you all information you need whether a game is for you or not. Unfortunately many people are more impulsive & don't do that & just buy things, but unfortunately usually to late when they realise game is not for them.
I am not a fan of this game, but I do feel if people are given more time to review something before having a refund would help all sectors of the gaming industry not just the customers.
It should probably be more up to the developers how long they should allow. Some games are meant to be played in a few hours, in which case 2 is probably more than fair. I've had games where I feel I "got my money's worth" from the game, and I only have 5 or 10 hours in.
But for a game like civ, it should be at least 5, if not 10. 5 hours is enough to mostly get you through a full age, and really give you a chance to try it out.
Now, whether it's worth refunding all those people who do put in 5-10 hours who can now refund, when they wouldn't have before, vs what comments they leave, that's another story.
Firaxis finance is not depending on game sales because they are owned by the publisher 2k.
aieeegrunt
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This is a terrible idea. If you hate a game, you are not putting ten hours into it just to leave a review
This protects games as terrible as Civ7
That didn’t save Bethesda, and the similarities between Fallout 76 and Civ76 are very close
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GeneralZift
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The suggestion that DLC makes up a big portion of the income for a studio is highlighting that the players numbers are actually even more important than previously thought.
That's why they need to concern themselves with keeping interest in the game. If no one plays it, no one will buy the DLC.
The DLC probably needs to be significant enough to bring players that have lost interest. It looks tough ahead I reckon.
That's why they need to concern themselves with keeping interest in the game. If no one plays it, no one will buy the DLC.
The DLC probably needs to be significant enough to bring players that have lost interest. It looks tough ahead I reckon.
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2K aren't going to support studios making a loss, they aren't a charity, so I don't even know what you mean by this? Of course they are dependent on game sales
What I meant is that Firaxis is not funding its expenses from the revenue stream. All revenue belongs to 2K. Firaxis operates on the budget decided by 2K management, and as long as there is trust in Firaxis, they will be good. And when not... yep.
Core Imposter
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I was under the impression that Firaxis employee bonuses are tied to how well their releases sell.
Regular (non-exec) bonuses are effectively a rounding error (when publishers don't find a way to avoid paying them in the first place). What you're saying has very little (if anything) to do with what itix is saying.
Core Imposter
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Would you hazard a guess as to what percentage of Firaxis staff is using AI in their work and do you think AI will be used in the continued development of Civ 7?
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So it looks like we're headed for what I think is a new record this weekend. First week where not a moment of it scrapes above 10,000 concurrent players on steam. It scraped above by 17 last weekend, but this week has been trending lower, and we had what I think is the first sub 8,000 concurrent player Friday yesterday.
So we still haven't found the floor for this game, it's still dropping off in players, which feels like quite a bad sign for replayability amongst the wider player base and longevity of the game
So we still haven't found the floor for this game, it's still dropping off in players, which feels like quite a bad sign for replayability amongst the wider player base and longevity of the game
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