Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[GeneralZift]

Most simple solution: create 50 unassociated traditions. If you transcend, you gain 2 random ones for free. This way, it would also work backwards for modern civs in antiquity.

Maybe tie them to legacy paths. You always unlock 4 "dark age traditions" you can choose from, but you can unlock up to 3 alternative choices by getting down each legacy path.

I like the idea but not totally a fan of random bonuses on transcending. I would like it if they were tangentially related to the original Civ in question.
The second idea is a good realistic option I could see the developers doing.

I know it's not in the spirit of Civ7, but I don't like seeing the game being 'forced' down the real steps of history, when some of the fun of the older games was rewriting history to your own unique situation.

Maybe I want to see the Mayans in the Future Era. Why not? I'd additionally love to see the architecture retain the style somehow on transcending.
In Civ5 and Civ6, hitting the Modern Era tends to turn the entire map into homogenous skyscrapers. It's just like real life, but it's missing its potential in my humble opinion.

 

[kotpeter]

I wonder if anyone brought up steam achievements' stats before?

These are % of players who completed antiquity golden ages for different branches. Are these numbers expectedly low? Or high?

Imo we might be underestimating the amount of players who don't like playing for goals and play for immersion and sandboxing instead.

 

[CliffCo]

I wonder if anyone brought up steam achievements' stats before?

These are % of players who completed antiquity golden ages for different branches. Are these numbers expectedly low? Or high?

Imo we might be underestimating the amount of players who don't like playing for goals and play for immersion and sandboxing instead.
View attachment 731319

While I always play in the hope of winning, for me winning and Steam achievements have not been the most enjoyable or satisfying part of the game, I get more enjoyment out of creating a large empire with attractive settlements, and well placed buildings etc. I was the same way with Civ6, if I win by doing so then that’s great. Victories such as winning in the fewest amount of turns possible or playing on the hardest difficulty possible has never interested me.

 

[Yzman]

I wonder if anyone brought up steam achievements' stats before?

These are % of players who completed antiquity golden ages for different branches. Are these numbers expectedly low? Or high?

Imo we might be underestimating the amount of players who don't like playing for goals and play for immersion and sandboxing instead.
View attachment 731319

I am personally someone who likes goals and not just complete sandbox so I do focus on things like achievements, challenges etc.

 

[Nineliveslost]

I wonder if anyone brought up steam achievements' stats before?

These are % of players who completed antiquity golden ages for different branches. Are these numbers expectedly low? Or high?

Imo we might be underestimating the amount of players who don't like playing for goals and play for immersion and sandboxing instead.
View attachment 731319

Perfect ,I play for immersion and sandbox. Completed a lot of games but played 50x amount more than that.

They fudged up just looking at "finished" games. i cant tell you how many times i started a game and said "wait, what about this game as Zulu or France or Russia." they have taken that away . very little immersion

 

[itix]

I went to check how Civilization VII VR is doing. Not doing much. A few more reviews, counting at 283, that is it. It also seems it never got much attention from the media.

Back to PC baseline and Steam charts, because charts are fun. Seems Civ 7 is still on rapid decline in its 3rd month. Below you can see charts for Civ 7 & 6.

 

[user746383]

Anyone who says all the players are on console should be forced to play a console version. I bought the Switch one on launch. Crashes, late patches, and basically always being treated as less important than PC. I know PS5 had even worse crashes that were only recently partially fixed.

 

[user746383]

Oh, and the performance is quite terrible, and all your DLC disappears if you try to play on a plane because it apparently requires you to be always connected. And no mods can help you with any of the still unfixed UI issues or better AI or anything. So I’m not really sure at all how that could be their flagship experience with the most happy and active users.

 

[sixty4half]

My nephew says his ps5 version has some crash issues but I've only experienced them very rarely

I dont think anyone said "all the players are on console" just that we dont have a complete picture since we dont have console numbers.

 

[user746383]

Sure I’m sure some people are playing (I was one who tried) I just mean I find it unlikely it is making up for poor PC sales and players for the reasons mentioned. The vast majority of players would have to be on console for this to be true as some % of PC players being on console wouldn’t be compensating for anything. Other AAA (and even non-AAA) games from around the same period have many multiples of Civ7’s player count, not just a bit more. More like how civ6’s looked at launch.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

So the console question has lingered for some time and it's hard to answer fully because of how many platforms it released on and availability of data.

But I've done some digging and found some data.

First, on launch, Civ VII failed to make the top 40 or even top 100 most played games on playstation network (across PS5 and PS4) according to true trophies, a website which takes a sample of 3milllion PSN accounts to look at which games are most popular.

Civilization VII launch fell short of last week's top 100 PlayStation games

Whether the problem is a divided audience or a mixed reception, Civilization VII's PS5 and PS4 launch player count doesn't look all that impressive.

www.truetrophies.com

This is significant as playercount generally peak at launch, so it's reasonably safe to assume it's gone down from there.

I've also dug into the most recent data, and taken a snap of the current situation for Civ games on the PSN compared to other Civ games, and then compared to other games with similar player counts for the PS5 version

The 4 columns shown, in order, are Score, Ratio, Gamers, and Comp %. So the 3rd column is the key one and doesn't look good at all.

You can see the kind of games it sits alongside, I haven't heard of any of them. If you order the games by playercount, it currently sits 129th on the 32nd page, where each page has 250 games on it. That makes it the 7,879th most played game on the PSN right now. For context, Civ VII has hovered just under the 250th most played right up to the point Civ VII released according to the article above.

 

[Siptah]

So the console question has lingered for some time and it's hard to answer fully because of how many platforms it released on and availability of data.

But I've done some digging and found some data.

Truetrophies data has been posted a few times by now on this site. It may have been lost with the old thread, however.

First, on launch, Civ VII failed to make the top 40 or even top 100 most played games on playstation network (across PS5 and PS4) according to true trophies, a website which takes a sample of 3milllion PSN accounts to look at which games are most popular.

Civilization VII launch fell short of last week's top 100 PlayStation games

Whether the problem is a divided audience or a mixed reception, Civilization VII's PS5 and PS4 launch player count doesn't look all that impressive.

www.truetrophies.com

Apparently, civ VII was not played that much on PS on release. Maybe because at release it was really unstable, making a high peak impossible?
It was dowloaded often at release (official source), even though it missed the top 10:

PlayStation Store: February 2025’s top downloads

New releases Monster Hunter Wilds and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II topped the PS5 charts in February.

blog.playstation.com

But this has also been posted on here before.

New source (actually old, but it seems it has not been posted here yet):
I'm not sure how trustworthy this site is: https://9meters.com/entertainment/games/sid-meiers-civilization-vii-latest-news-and-updates
It certainly looks AI created, and reads a fair bit shady, but it claims more than 600k sales on consoles:

Sales Figures​

Despite a rocky launch with UI issues, Civilization VII has maintained strong sales figures in Q1 2025. The game sold approximately 1.8 million copies in its first month, slightly below projections but still ranking in the top 5 strategy games for the quarter.

Stock prices for publisher Take-Two Interactive saw a modest 4.3% increase following the March 4th update announcement. This positive market reaction suggests investor confidence in the development team’s commitment to addressing early criticisms.

The cross-platform availability across PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch has expanded the potential market reach. Console versions account for roughly 35% of total sales, marking the strongest console performance in franchise history.

Budget forecasts indicate additional post-launch content planned throughout 2025, with the development team receiving increased resources following initial sales performance.

 

[Xur]

Dunno why, but whenever I hear all the platforms that civ is on now I think of LOTR; "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Truetrophies data has been posted a few times by now on this site. It may have been lost with the old thread, however.


Apparently, civ VII was not played that much on PS on release. Maybe because at release it was really unstable, making a high peak impossible?
It was dowloaded often at release (official source), even though it missed the top 10:

PlayStation Store: February 2025’s top downloads

New releases Monster Hunter Wilds and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II topped the PS5 charts in February.

blog.playstation.com

But this has also been posted on here before.

New source (actually old, but it seems it has not been posted here yet):
I'm not sure how trustworthy this site is: https://9meters.com/entertainment/games/sid-meiers-civilization-vii-latest-news-and-updates
It certainly looks AI created, and reads a fair bit shady, but it claims more than 600k sales on consoles:

The 600k sales on consoles number feels realistic, but it's difficult to reconcile with the player counts unless a ton of people bought it that just never played it, or played it well after buying it. Or the switch sales were mega compared to PS5. I wouldn't rule that out because switch is an entirely different beast, but on physical sales it was lower than PS5, and it's more difficult to download on switch because you need extra SD cards and whatnot.

The fact that there are over 7,000 games that are currently played more on PS5 than it tells me a lot about the success of it on that platform. It's still in the top 200 on pc, so it's just not cutting through on console in the same way, and it doesn't bode well for DLC sales on non-pc platforms

 

[user746383]

Is there anything that indicates that (incredibly long!) article isn’t just AI slop? No sources are provided anywhere. I read through the whole thing and feel like I lost an IQ point or two.

 

[Siptah]

The 600k sales on consoles number feels realistic, but it's difficult to reconcile with the player counts unless a ton of people bought it that just never played it, or played it well after buying it.

I find the article that I posted shady. The quoted article reads as if they already knew the official report by 2k. But it's 1.5 months old. It feels unrealistic to me that the sales info (1.8m) and console share of 35% would have been published somewhere but the CFC folks missed it. On the other hand, would they just invent numbers out of thin air?

But you are right: 600k isn't completely unbelievable, but not really fitting into the picture we have from other sources.

Or the switch sales were mega compared to PS5. I wouldn't rule that out because switch is an entirely different beast, but on physical sales it was lower than PS5, and it's more difficult to download on switch because you need extra SD cards and whatnot.

Indeed, Switch is the only platform for which I've bought games physically since it released. Maybe, with the Switch 2 around the corner at 7's release, some people thought that buying digitally would be safer to continue playing on Switch 2? Pure speculation though.

 

[user746383]

I guess an LLM would have no problem making up numbers.

 

[Siptah]

I guess an LLM would have no problem making up numbers.

I'm aware that they make up numbers and facts all the time, but I would assume that when someone places his name as author on a text, they would have checked things at least. I probably live in the wrong world though.

 

[user746383]

Ah, yeah, I wish that was true! But people have been lying for personal profit (this seems to be some kind of SEO/affiliate spam site) on the internet for a bit now.

 

[itix]

When Civ 7 was on early access it had nearly 500k Steam sales estimated by gamalytic. It is possible it sold well on consoles before the launch but faded soon after?

We also know from retail sales charts Civ7 was in top 3-10 in the first week (UK, NZ, Australia?) but it didn't last.