Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Kwami]

You stated that Civ 6 had lower player counts than Civ 5 for 2 years after release. I have proved by looking at the historical graphs that this was NOT the case.

It absolutely was the case. There are plenty of graphs in this thread that prove it.

 

[Smegger213]

It absolutely was the case. There are plenty of graphs in this thread that prove it.

Go look at SteamDB.
Anybody can look at a yearly graph for each game, then move the year bar to the year of release.
In fact those are screenshots of those graphs that I shared above.
It shows that Civ 6 had more players on average than Civ 5 over the first couple of years after release.
Comparing the 1st 2 years of both games.
Or are you disputing SteamDB's own graphs? Surely not?

 

[Kwami]

Go look at SteamDB.
Anybody can look at a yearly graph for each game, then move the year bar to the year of release.
In fact those are screenshots of those graphs that I shared above.
It shows that Civ 6 had more players on average than Civ 5 over the first couple of years after release.
Comparing the 1st 2 years of both games.
Or are you disputing SteamDB's own graphs? Surely not?

Here you go:

I

Post in thread 'Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread'

Nov 25, 2025

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...

• IntelligentDisk

• 

And here's the graph again, just to be safe.

 

[Krikkit1]

Here you go:

I

Post in thread 'Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread'

Nov 25, 2025

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...

• IntelligentDisk

• 

And here's the graph again, just to be safe.
View attachment 749353

Go look at SteamDB.
Anybody can look at a yearly graph for each game, then move the year bar to the year of release.
In fact those are screenshots of those graphs that I shared above.
It shows that Civ 6 had more players on average than Civ 5 over the first couple of years after release.
Comparing the 1st 2 years of both games.
Or are you disputing SteamDB's own graphs? Surely not?

I think you are talking about different things

Civ 6 players during Civ 6's 1st 2wo years compared to

Civ 5 player's.....
During civ 5's first 2 years (5<6)
During Civ 6's first few years (5>6)

 

[itix]

Here you go:

I

Post in thread 'Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread'

Nov 25, 2025

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...

• IntelligentDisk

• 

And here's the graph again, just to be safe.
View attachment 749353

Is there a graph with Civ VII included?

 

[Gorbles]

Is there a graph with Civ VII included?

What would this prove, except to rehash "Civ is doing worse in numbers"?

To rephrase: what question are you looking to answer?

 

[itix]

What would this prove, except to rehash "Civ is doing worse in numbers"?

To rephrase: what question are you looking to answer?

Yes. Did I kill your cat or something?

 

[UWHabs]

We've had those graphs before, I'm pretty sure. Civ 7 would be around where the bottom axis of that above graph is (it was a little below it until the up-tick from the last couple months), which is also why that graph above is a bit disingenuous.

Everyone at Firaxis I'm sure would love the numbers to be higher. Certainly the upward movement in the last couple months has been good for the game, both in player numbers, and in reviews. Potato McWhiskey is back to streaming some 7 content of late too, so there's more people coming back to the fold. I'm sure the devs would still love things to be higher still, but definitely the next couple months will be big for them, to see if these changes keep moving up, or if this is just a temporary increase and it falls back down, and will need an even bigger kick to see if it can regain players.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Is there a graph with Civ VII included?

This graph can't include Civ7 because it wasn't released back then

 

[Smegger213]

I think you are talking about different things

Civ 6 players during Civ 6's 1st 2wo years compared to

Civ 5 player's.....
During civ 5's first 2 years (5<6)
During Civ 6's first few years (5>6)

I am saying that during its first year of release, Civ 6 had more players than what Civ 5 had during its first year of release.
I have looked back at the numbers on SteamDB. But that list when you go back, only lists the highest peak player count for each month. The averages are not listed.
So, I have added up those higher player counts for the first 12 months of both games.
I have discounted the 1st 2 months of both games because both had very high player counts in the first 2 months. The numbers settled down after the 1st 2 months. So, I have added up the 12 months high player counts from both games, then divided by 12 to find the average.
Here are the results. Discounting the 1st 2 months.
Average of highest player count for 12 months was:

Civ 5 = 29,759.5
Civ 6 = 31,794.6

What's Civ 7's average for highest player count? Er, its very low.

 

[Gorbles]

Yes. Did I kill your cat or something?

Bit of a strong reaction.

Anyhow, the numbers you want were hashed out on the previous page or two. I was just wondering if there was any other rationale. For example, you could have wanted to see where Civ VII was trending, compared to the previous two games. But apparently not.

 

[itix]

I suspect/feel/speculate/guess that the positive trend they are having now is important for the Christmas season sales. The Steam page now has 59% positive for recent reviews, and 50% for all time English reviews. With the 2nd part of free DLC landing soon, I think Civ VII will be fine for the next two months.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I know. I'm saying taking a post that describes how Civ VII has a stable playerbase that has stopped bottoming out and changing the argument to "it's worse than other games" is, well, changing the argument.

Nobody was claiming it was doing better than V or VI. That wasn't the point.

So the question is, is this base big enough to sustain and build on.

If those graphs are accurate, it looks like half of what 6 and 5 had their first two years

And how would you describe the activity of constantly complaining about a 'dead' game?

It’s the Internet. I’ve seen people spend way more effort in way stupider ways online. What’s even more pathetic is the behavior of moderators online, which is why I deleted Reddit

This site has excellent moderation, I don’t think people appreciate it enough. People are free to disagree and voice their opinion and I’ve only seen moderation when things really escalate out of hand, and even then you get a fair number of warnings

This is increasingly rare in this day and age

 

[aelf]

It’s the Internet. I’ve seen people spend way more effort in way stupider ways online.

Not disagreeing, but the characterisation of an activity as "mice running on a wheel" seems to apply at least equally to that.

What’s even more pathetic is the behavior of moderators online, which is why I deleted Reddit

This site has excellent moderation, I don’t think people appreciate it enough. People are free to disagree and voice their opinion and I’ve only seen moderation when things really escalate out of hand, and even then you get a fair number of warnings

This is increasingly rare in this day and age

Reddit has its issues, but I think the community policing aspect can work. For example, when toxic behaviours or unconstructive posts get downvoted, that could discourage them. The Civ subreddits have been much better of late for that reason.

 

[Gorbles]

So the question is, is this base big enough to sustain and build on.

Good question, but impossible to answer. It depends on a number of publisher-defined metrics for financial success, the resource cost of current and future developments, and so on.

Does VII have a self-sustaining community, period? I think so, now. Can that momentum still be squandered? Absolutely. Do I think it will be? Given that they're explicitly targeting "playing as one civ", among other things, I don't think it will be squandered. 2026 will define the trajectory for this iteration, I think. V and VI had pretty long tails. We're not even done with the first year for VII yet. Heading into the end of the second year will give us a less arguable dataset.

 

[Kwami]

So the question is, is this base big enough to sustain and build on.

If those graphs are accurate, it looks like half of what 6 and 5 had their first two years

It's a little better than that because VII was also released on the Epic Store and on consoles while the other two games were exclusive to Steam in the early days. But, yes, VII has a smaller player base than those two games did.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

Here's the graph for 30-Day Average Peak Concurrent Players of Civ V, Civ VI & Civ VII looking at their first 2 years after each release. Obviously we're only 300 days in to Civ VII currently. I'll probably opt to use 28 days instead of 30 days in future to make it as fair as possible, but I think 30 days is mostly fine.

The first bumps near release for Civ V & Civ VI are the Christmas periods (2010 & 2016). The huge bumps towards the end are the releases of the first expansion packs.

At the 301 day mark (which was yesterday December 3rd for Civ VII), Civ V was at 20,225, Civ VI was at 20,977 & Civ VII was at 10,092 (for the 30-Day Avearge Peak Concurrent Player number).

This next graph is my attempt at looking at percentage of players retained. This is using the first 30-Day Average Peak Concurrent Players and comparing it against every subsequent 30-Day Average Peak Concurrent Player period for the next 2 years. As we can see, Civ V had much better player retention than both Civ VI & Civ VII. Civ VII has the worst player retention on Steam of the 3.

There are of course multiple external factors outside of the game itself which are different between the 3. Launch platforms, release months, price/sales & competition.

1. Launch platforms: Civ V & Civ VI launched only on Steam. Civ VII launched on Steam, Epic Games Store, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/XSX/S & Switch.
2. Release months: Civ V launched end of September leading into Winter & Christmas period. Civ VI launched end of October leading into Winter & Chrismas period. Civ VII launched early February leading into Spring.
3. Price/Sales: This graph best illustrates the differences in launch price & sales in $. Civ V launched at $50, Civ VI launched at $60, Civ VII launched at $70. It shows the launch price and then the cheapest the game had been available for on Steam. By this point in each games life cycle, Civ V had been available for $17 (66% discount), Civ VI had been available for $36 (40% discount) & Civ VII has been available for $45 (35% discount). Discount data isn't readily available for Civ V. I had to search the Civ V forum here to look for posts talking about discounts to find information. It's possible I missed some posts about sales. Comparing launch prices in different countries between Civ VI & Civ VII, and taking into account inflation, real wage growth & purchasing power, Civ VII is less affordable than Civ VI was at launch. Launch prices in other currencies & countries also isn't readily available for Civ V.

4. Competition: There is more competition on Steam. There are more games per user & less users per game now than there were 10 to 15 years ago.

In 2010, there were 2,450 user accounts per game. (2.7m user accounts, 1,102 games on Steam). In 2010, Civ V had the highest peak out of any game. It would be 41st in 2025.
In 2016, there were 1,105 user accounts per game. (12.5m user accounts, 11,309 games on Steam). In 2016, Civ VI had the 4th highest peak out of any game. It would be 20th in 2025.
In 2025, there were 329 user accounts per game. (39.3m user accounts, 119,644 games on Steam). In 2025, Civ VII has had the 38th highest peak out of any game. It would probably be higher if it's launch wasn't split between 2 dates.

Data for Steam Active Users only begins November 2017. So, 2017 is only November & December. Nov & Dec 2017 had 324 active users per game. 2018 had 179 active users per game. 2025 has had 90 active users per game.

 

[PlatinumPoster]

It's a little better than that

We can't even say its a 'little' better. We have no idea how better it is as we dont have the numbers - it could be much better or not really better at all. Unless there are some charts/numebrs you've seen?

 

[Kwami]

We can't even say its a 'little' better. We have no idea how better it is as we dont have the numbers - it could be much better or not really better at all. Unless there are some charts/numebrs you've seen?

If you want to be pedantic about it, then even one console of Epic player is already a little better. Or, you could just accept a common phrase and move on.

 

[PlatinumPoster]

If you want to be pedantic about it, then even one console of Epic player is already a little better. Or, you could just accept a common phrase and move on.

It wasn't me being pedantic, the difference could be very big, we just dont know. If you didn't mean 'little' then I misunderstood. And I was generally wondering if you'd seen a chart that indicated it was only a small increase.