Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Leucarum]

Best case scenario: First big XPAC gets very high reviews and people look at that in combination with "recent reviews"

 

[Kwami]

The game isn't going to live or die whether it's 56% instead of 60%, or 58% instead of 56% either.

The fact is that the numbers are definitely up from where they were just a few months ago. But they're not up so much, still. I mean even if they keep putting up 60% for the rest of the life of the game, that's still not great for a flagship product. Now that things are trending up, though, the question is where they end up stabilizing. Can they get the new review rate at a high enough level that the overall rating of the game will ever tick over to the "mostly positive" category, or is it doomed to forever be mixed? Can they even get a relatively decent sample where the new reviews are mostly positive?

The numbers are way up from where they were in the summer. Back then, positive reviews were below 40%! (June 3 - September 8 because that's what I think of as "summer" and moving a week or two either way doesn't change much. With all purchases and all languages, the positive % of those 4,814 reviews was 37%.)

I brought up the Steam review graph for Civ VI and highlighted the span November 27, 2016 - October 25, 2019. I didn't choose those dates intentionally. That was the period of low review activity after the initial launch and before... whatever caused review numbers to skyrocket the following week. Was there a big sale or something in November, 2019? Did they release one of those bundle packs like the Gold Edition?

Anyway, there were ~1,281 reviews per month during that period and, if I include all languages and purchases from all sources, they averaged 70% positive.

So, Civ VII seems to be on its way to where Civ VI was during its low-activity review period. That period lasted for almost three years for Civ VI. Will it be the same for VII?

 

[Smegger213]

You think it's pointless. Why does it matter to you, so much, that people post about it then?

It matters to me because every time I post any sort of numbers. Be they review counts or player counts. I get put down and sometimes directly insulted by other people in this forum.
EG comments like "then you probably should not be analyzing data, because you clearly have no idea what you are doing.".
That is why it matters to me.

 

[Crashdummy]

I do not share the optimism of some of you display, but I'm not dismissing it either. Maybe you're right and I'm too negative.

All the work done in the last 3 months has resulted in a minor boost in reviews (good news) and short lived small boosts in player count when a new patch/content was released. But civ fans simply refuse to ditch earlier versions for Civ7, as the 3mo player count graph shows. Neither Civ5 or Civ6 have decreasing player counts in recent months. Worse, w/o promotions, Civ7 barely sells 2.7k copies a week. Far too low to keep Firaxis afloat. I know Firaxis is working hard to fix Civ7's poor reception, but by and large, it isn't working in any meaningful way. They have yet to find a solution as the player count has more or less flatlined. Will they fix it eventually? Perhaps. But there are no signs as far as I can see that the game's fortunes are trending up in any meaningful way. Maybe if they find a solution to civ switching, age transitions and the horrible urban sprawl. Or something else.

For me, until I see Civ5's and Civ6's numbers trend slowly down and Civ7's trending up, Civ7 remains a troubled release, unfortunately.

View attachment 748696

I agree with you that the change isnt significant, but i do think its a necessary first step to "stop the bleeding" of negative reviews

Again, around 60% positive recent reviews isnt great either. Also, while the announcements can help reduce negativity, it wont increase player numbers by much untill those announcements become a reality

 

[Gorbles]

It matters to me because every time I post any sort of numbers. Be they review counts or player counts. I get put down and sometimes directly insulted by other people in this forum.
EG comments like "then you probably should not be analyzing data, because you clearly have no idea what you are doing.".
That is why it matters to me.

Fair enough. I would suggest that it isn't pointless then; that it matters, but that's just my £0.02.

 

[Xandinho]

This whole discussion is why I think proclaiming a turnaround should wait at least until the recent reviews are out of the “gray zone” on Steam. I believe that’s a perfectly fair standard and one that would potentially have an impact on sales. Currently, recent reviews are in the gray zone with 55% positive over the past 30 days, according to the Steam store page.

The game isn't going to live or die whether it's 56% instead of 60%, or 58% instead of 56% either.

The fact is that the numbers are definitely up from where they were just a few months ago. But they're not up so much, still. I mean even if they keep putting up 60% for the rest of the life of the game, that's still not great for a flagship product. Now that things are trending up, though, the question is where they end up stabilizing. Can they get the new review rate at a high enough level that the overall rating of the game will ever tick over to the "mostly positive" category, or is it doomed to forever be mixed? Can they even get a relatively decent sample where the new reviews are mostly positive?

The franchise has a history of improving significantly through expansions that introduce new mechanics and refine existing ones, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the positive reviews increase substantially after the first major expansion.

I’m not sure if I’m being too optimistic, but I feel the game is moving in the right direction. Even without a “Classic Mode” yet, and despite the controversial forced civ switching, the game’s reception has noticeably improved in recent weeks. This suggests there’s plenty of room for further progress once classic players return—finally able to launch rockets into space as Egypt or colonize the Antiquity Age while playing as America.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

I do not share the optimism of some of you display, but I'm not dismissing it either. Maybe you're right and I'm too negative.

All the work done in the last 3 months has resulted in a minor boost in reviews (good news) and short lived small boosts in player count when a new patch/content was released. But civ fans simply refuse to ditch earlier versions for Civ7, as the 3mo player count graph shows. Neither Civ5 or Civ6 have decreasing player counts in recent months. Worse, w/o promotions, Civ7 barely sells 2.7k copies a week. Far too low to keep Firaxis afloat. I know Firaxis is working hard to fix Civ7's poor reception, but by and large, it isn't working in any meaningful way. They have yet to find a solution as the player count has more or less flatlined. Will they fix it eventually? Perhaps. But there are no signs as far as I can see that the game's fortunes are trending up in any meaningful way. Maybe if they find a solution to civ switching, age transitions and the horrible urban sprawl. Or something else.

For me, until I see Civ5's and Civ6's numbers trend slowly down and Civ7's trending up, Civ7 remains a troubled release, unfortunately.

View attachment 748696

Civ VII has actually been rising since 1.2.5 almost 2 months ago, with Civ VI seeing a slight decline during the same period. Civ VI did go much lower during Spring though and recovered while Civ VII stagnated until the September lows. Civ V has remained incredibly consistent.

I don't think you, I or anyone here knows what would keep Firaxis "afloat", but I would think 1 to 2 million copies (assuming these are the numbers) of Civ VII being sold across all platforms would do the trick for quite a while.

The player count looking "flat lined" is completely normal for games following release. This isn't even completely true anyway as demonstrated in the graph above.

The graph below shows the rolling 30 day average of peak concurrent players for Civ V & VI for the 2 years following VIs release. As you can see, Civ VIs player count didn't rise within the first year nor does it look like it took any players away from Civ V during that period either. Even after the first expansion in February 2018, the player count numbers fell right back down to around where they were a year prior. Only after 2 years did Civ VIs player count start to substantially rise and that was after the first expansion and almost a whole year of the game being available for between $20 and $30 during sales (during 2018). Only after the first expansion and sales down to $20-$30 did Civ V start to lose players.

I also wouldn't call the increase of the Steam positive % as "minor" when it has gone from a range of 24-45% to a peak of over 60% over a 4-week period (and currently a 30-day period as of today). The previous peak was at launch was around 50%. ~10% higher than the previous peak and ~15-35% higher than what we were used to seeing over the course of 6 months.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

So far today has seen a huge increase of positive reviews - the highest since March. I don't know why this is but I do know this has come at a time where Civ VI also similarly saw huge increases of positive reviews (during this period of November). I pointed this out previously that Civ VI always saw a huge number of positive reviews at the end of November for each of its first 3/4 years.

Looking at other recent releases (EUV, Endless Legend II, Battlefield 6), they all have also seen huge increases of positive reviews starting today. I expect this to last 7 days given what we saw with Civ VI. This could result in the best reviewed week for Civ VII to date.

It doesn't look like SteamDB is doing this by itself for whatever reason, as on Steam it is showing 66 positive reviews & 17 negative reviews for Civ VII today so far. These are Steam purchasers only.

After some searching for answers, it looks like a possible explanation for this is the Steam Award nominations starting (which looks like it always happen at the end of November). You earn a "Steam Awards Nomination Committee Badge" (which apparently has some perks to it) if you nominate a game, play a game you've nominated, nominate a game in each category and importantly review (or update your review) for a game you've nominated.

 

[kotpeter]

So far today has seen a huge increase of positive reviews - the highest since March. I don't know why this is

My assumption is that since we're seeing reviews based on review date and not purchase/install date, these reviews most likely come from players who purchased the game during the past few weeks. Negative reviews seem to take less playtime to appear than positive reviews.

 

[Evolena]

So far today has seen a huge increase of positive reviews - the highest since March. I don't know why this is but I do know this has come at a time where Civ VI also similarly saw huge increases of positive reviews (during this period of November). I pointed this out previously that Civ VI always saw a huge number of positive reviews at the end of November for each of its first 3/4 years.

[...]

After some searching for answers, it looks like a possible explanation for this is the Steam Award nominations starting (which looks like it always happen at the end of November). You earn a "Steam Awards Nomination Committee Badge" (which apparently has some perks to it) if you nominate a game, play a game you've nominated, nominate a game in each category and importantly review (or update your review) for a game you've nominated.

Yes, probably that, happening each year at the end of November:

And I guess at that occasion people mostly choose to review a game they've liked.

 

[kent77]

After some searching for answers, it looks like a possible explanation for this is the Steam Award nominations starting (which looks like it always happen at the end of November). You earn a "Steam Awards Nomination Committee Badge" (which apparently has some perks to it) if you nominate a game, play a game you've nominated, nominate a game in each category and importantly review (or update your review) for a game you've nominated.

Good sleuthing, IntelligentDisk. More generally, thank you for your cogent data analyses and visualization.