Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[protocol7]

You can do some back of the napkin math to play with numbers yourself. For example, the peak was ~9500 players in a given hour, and right now it’s a smidge under 4000. If you take the midpoint as average (which you can also play with) then you get around 6750 people playing in a given hour in a day. Multiply that by 24 hours and there are 162000 play hours in a day.

Then, if you think hundreds of thousands are playing (let’s say 300000), then their average play time is about a half hour. If it’s a hundred thousand then the play time is about an hour and a half. 50000 is three and a half hours and so on.

I did this math in my head in a waiting room so please double check, but you get the idea. You can change the variables around to what makes sense to you to get a feel for what might be true.

 

[Gorbles]

Yes, it's almost like I said "tens of thousands" as the baseline point. "hundreds of thousands" was speculative (not impossible, but certainly not my default assumption).

But I guess anything to beat a dead horse. Or to like posts beating a dead horse

 

[protocol7]

It's just interesting numbers with lots of variables you can play with to get all kinds of results, which I thought might be interesting to discuss. That's why I tried to show a range and how you could play with the numbers. It wasn't intended as a personal attack or to beat a dead horse.

 

[youngsteve]

We will see how EU5 is at release, but if its anything like past paradox titles, it too will needs years of work(Many $$$ expansions) before it starts to really shine. They arent known for releasing solid products. They had 2 major flops in recent years. Even titles that werent flops, had numerous overhauls to try and make it better. Eu4 today is completely different from what it was at release. Hopefully its a solid release, but they havent given me any reason to believe it will be different.

I presume one of those two flops is Victoria 3. Yes it has underperformed & has low numbers playing, but isn't an AAA title like Civ 7 & has been around 21/2 years longer. Despite this, this failure has been fighting neck & neck with Civ 7 for the last few days, so what sort of flop does that make Civ 7.

 

[protocol7]

Vicky 3 and Civ7 have basically been neck and neck since launch if you line up their releases.

 

[King of Prussia]

Id be curious to know how many unique players there are in a given day and week. 100k+ is not out of the question.

With the Steam summer sale just around the corner, im curious what kind of sale they will go for, if any. My low end guess is 20%, high end is 33%.

I presume one of those two flops is Victoria 3. Yes it has underperformed & has low numbers playing, but isn't an AAA title like Civ 7 & has been around 21/2 years longer. Despite this, this failure has been fighting neck & neck with Civ 7 for the last few days, so what sort of flop does that make Civ 7.

Vicky 3 was massively anticipated and hyped. Even today, its not a good game after years of patching and expansions. I tried both Vicky 2 and 3 out around the same time late last year, and despite 2s flaws, it was a vastly superior game to 3. The UI in 3 is just atrocious. I didnt care for some of the mechanics. I hated their tech web. At least it wasnt as big of a flop as that roman game they released. Idk if they even do patches for that anymore.

Paradox has the capacity to release games on a similar level to Civ. They have several games in the top 100, including Hoi4 having more players than Civ6. They have the personal, time, brand name(very important), and resources to make solid AAA games. Maybe Eu5 will be a massive success. Maybe it will need years and years of patching and overhauling like stellaris or Eu4.


We will see how Civ 7 does after a year or 2 of patches/dlc/expansions. Civ 5 was atrocious at release. After 2 expansions, it became a very solid game. Will 7 be the same way? Will 7 even get the chance to get that far? We will see.

 

[queenpea]

Id be curious to know how many unique players there are in a given day and week. 100k+ is not out of the question.

With the Steam summer sale just around the corner, im curious what kind of sale they will go for, if any. My low end guess is 20%, high end is 33%.


Vicky 3 was massively anticipated and hyped. Even today, its not a good game after years of patching and expansions. I tried both Vicky 2 and 3 out around the same time late last year, and despite 2s flaws, it was a vastly superior game to 3. The UI in 3 is just atrocious. I didnt care for some of the mechanics. I hated their tech web. At least it wasnt as big of a flop as that roman game they released. Idk if they even do patches for that anymore.

Paradox has the capacity to release games on a similar level to Civ. They have several games in the top 100, including Hoi4 having more players than Civ6. They have the personal, time, brand name(very important), and resources to make solid AAA games. Maybe Eu5 will be a massive success. Maybe it will need years and years of patching and overhauling like stellaris or Eu4.


We will see how Civ 7 does after a year or 2 of patches/dlc/expansions. Civ 5 was atrocious at release. After 2 expansions, it became a very solid game. Will 7 be the same way? Will 7 even get the chance to get that far? We will see.

I actually really enjoy Vicky 3–and as an aside I think the steam rating is in the mid 60s. While I await the new patch for Civ VII (and triggered to pause playing after a particularly frustrating game on Pangaea Plus) I’ve picked up Vicky 3 again and am at the end of an interesting Belgium run.

Anyway, Vicky 3 is definitely in my recommend column if anyone needs a break from VII.

 

[King of Prussia]

I actually really enjoy Vicky 3–and as an aside I think the steam rating is in the mid 60s. While I await the new patch for Civ VII (and triggered to pause playing after a particularly frustrating game on Pangaea Plus) I’ve picked up Vicky 3 again and am at the end of an interesting Belgium run.

Anyway, Vicky 3 is definitely in my recommend column if anyone needs a break from VII.

Vicky 3 is suppose to get an update this week i think. I try to catch the dev streams when i can. As someone who plays a lot of paradox titles, I am hoping they can eventually turn it around into something i can enjoy.

 

[queenpea]

Vicky 3 is suppose to get an update this week i think. I try to catch the dev streams when i can. As someone who plays a lot of paradox titles, I am hoping they can eventually turn it around into something i can enjoy.

Yeah it’s another base game overhaul to the trade / good system ahead of a planned DLC release.

 

[Dedrytus]

From steam API concurrent players function description 'Gets the total number of players currently active in the specified app on Steam.

Note that this will not return players that are playing while not connected to Steam.'

So if someone starts game in the morning and doesn't shut it down during day he is reported as active player with 5 minutes intervals. So hidden thousands of players must be hidden within those minutes. Start game, play one round and quickly shutdown or play offline.

 

[Kev1916]

From Steam Top games with position

[td]
Current Players

[/td][td]
Peak Today

[/td]​

[td]
Game

[/td]


11,123 18,796 Civ V 42

26,243 43,508 Civ Vi 97

4,200 11,694 Civ Vii 178


There is Zero chance that Civ vii will get 100,000 different players in a day , and not much better in a week .

[td]


[/td]
[td]


[/td]​

Sid Meier's Civilization

 

[protocol7]

Id be curious to know how many unique players there are in a given day and week. 100k+ is not out of the question.

I think my totally unscientific guess would be around there too, maybe even a bit more. When I play civ7 I play for 2-3 hours. But I couldn't say for sure my own style of play reflects the average, but that "feels" about right. Maybe somewhere around 75,000 if I'm conservative.

 

[UWHabs]

From steam API concurrent players function description 'Gets the total number of players currently active in the specified app on Steam.

Note that this will not return players that are playing while not connected to Steam.'

So if someone starts game in the morning and doesn't shut it down during day he is reported as active player with 5 minutes intervals. So hidden thousands of players must be hidden within those minutes. Start game, play one round and quickly shutdown or play offline.

I'd guess civ is going to err the other way, with players who log in, play a bunch, leave the game open and running while they run to the store or head out, and come back a few hours later to continue a few turns before bed.

But yeah, it's hard to know if the 5-10k concurrent users translates to 20k users or 200k users. Or also what it means when you translate it to weekly users. Like I probably end up more like 2-3 sessions a week, where each session is like 3-4 hours.

 

[Xur]

I understand that people don't like the low player numbers, so they jump through hoops and point to fringe edge cases that could potentially "hide" data. But the raw number is irrelevant without comparison to other games. What's actually interesting is the trend. All other games on SteamDB operate under the same conditions, so any imagined fringe exceptions would apply to them as well.

A more meaningful approach is to compare Civ7 to other games that had poor launches and faced consequences afterward. I couldn't find that many strategy games. Maybe you guys know of more that failed spectacularly.

Imperator: Rome
Release: 41,945
1 month: 2,623
2 months: 982
3 months: 833
Final DLC: Released a little under 2 years later / sporadic updates, but effectively abandoned
Player drop: 98% in 3 months

Humankind
Release: 55,284
1 month: 10,017
2 months: 3,022
3 months: 2,419
Developers eventually bought themselves out from SEGA and "went back to their roots" (paraphrasing) with Endless Legend 2
Player drop: 95% in 3 months

Age of Wonders: Planetfall
Release: 10,462
1 month: 1,768
2 months: 976
3 months: 499
Game was "stabilized" and development quickly shifted to AoW 4, which launched 3 years and 9 months later with 4x the player count
Player drop: 95% in 3 months

Compared to civ titles:

Civ7
Release: 42,553 (advance access was stupid)
1 month: 26,668
2 months: 11,776
3 months: 12,306
First weekend peak: 84,558
Player drop: 85% in 3 months

Civ6
Release (Friday): 142,779
1 month: 48,798
2 months: 29,292
3 months: 34,018
First weekend peak: 162,475 (never surpassed and not even close)
Player drop: 79% in 3 months

Civ5
Release (Tuesday): 39,886
1 month: 27,698
2 months: 27,031
3 months: 20,771
First weekend peak: 70,096 (record broken only after 2 years and 9 months with second expansion). All-time peak at 91,363.
Player drop: 70% in 3 months
Very strong player retention even if you look several months later.

In conclusion, civ7 likely sold an acceptable number of copies, but not enough compared to its predecessors. More importantly, it retains players worse than civ5 or civ6 - though not disastrously so. It doesn’t look like a product doomed to be abandoned, but the signs aren't encouraging either. I think retention rate would have to be much worse than it currently is.

Civ6 may have ridden the momentum of Civ5's success. Being part of a longstanding franchise brings heavy expectations, and I believe Civ8 will face serious challenges if it hopes to regain its predecessor's appeal. Something was was lost in civ6 and that continued in civ7. The "Ed Beach" era.

It's like macroeconomics - you won't see immediate results until many years later. Firaxis might think Civ6 was a major success, but I'd argue it was propped up by the goodwill of Civ5. Civ5 was just that succesful. They may have learned the wrong lessons. Civ6 was certainly better than civ7, but just the wrong direction for the franchise. The franchise isn't dead, but the trend is clearly downward.

It's a shame that there is no data for civ4.

 

[Chiyo]

It's like macroeconomics - you won't see immediate results until many years later. Firaxis might think Civ6 was a major success, but I'd argue it was propped up by the goodwill of Civ5. Civ5 was just that succesful. They may have learned the wrong lessons. Civ6 was certainly better than civ7, but just the wrong direction for the franchise. The franchise isn't dead, but the trend is clearly downward.

You mean people have been playing Civ6 for eight years now though they did not like it but because they liked Civ5 so much? Consider me sceptic. Why would they not continue playing Civ5 in that case? I have been playing Civ6 because I think it is a really good game. I have also played EU4 quite a lot but if the next iteration does not look good to me I won't play it. Same as with Civ7. And I think I am not alone with that behaviour.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think my totally unscientific guess would be around there too, maybe even a bit more. When I play civ7 I play for 2-3 hours. But I couldn't say for sure my own style of play reflects the average, but that "feels" about right. Maybe somewhere around 75,000 if I'm conservative.

75K was a number on release, which had a huge trigger for players to act simultaneously. Unless Steam will sale something like 10x items more than presale (which was estimated as 1M), it will not happen in the regular situation. The only potential comparable trigger would be release of expansion if it will have the same scale of presales as the base game.

 

[Kwami]

I understand that people don't like the low player numbers, so they jump through hoops and point to fringe edge cases that could potentially "hide" data. But the raw number is irrelevant without comparison to other games. What's actually interesting is the trend. All other games on SteamDB operate under the same conditions, so any imagined fringe exceptions would apply to them as well.

A more meaningful approach is to compare Civ7 to other games that had poor launches and faced consequences afterward. I couldn't find that many strategy games. Maybe you guys know of more that failed spectacularly.

Imperator: Rome
Release: 41,945
1 month: 2,623
2 months: 982
3 months: 833
Final DLC: Released a little under 2 years later / sporadic updates, but effectively abandoned
Player drop: 98% in 3 months

Humankind
Release: 55,284
1 month: 10,017
2 months: 3,022
3 months: 2,419
Developers eventually bought themselves out from SEGA and "went back to their roots" (paraphrasing) with Endless Legend 2
Player drop: 95% in 3 months

Age of Wonders: Planetfall
Release: 10,462
1 month: 1,768
2 months: 976
3 months: 499
Game was "stabilized" and development quickly shifted to AoW 4, which launched 3 years and 9 months later with 4x the player count
Player drop: 95% in 3 months

Compared to civ titles:

Civ7
Release: 42,553 (advance access was stupid)
1 month: 26,668
2 months: 11,776
3 months: 12,306
First weekend peak: 84,558
Player drop: 85% in 3 months

Civ6
Release (Friday): 142,779
1 month: 48,798
2 months: 29,292
3 months: 34,018
First weekend peak: 162,475 (never surpassed and not even close)
Player drop: 79% in 3 months

Civ5
Release (Tuesday): 39,886
1 month: 27,698
2 months: 27,031
3 months: 20,771
First weekend peak: 70,096 (record broken only after 2 years and 9 months with second expansion). All-time peak at 91,363.
Player drop: 70% in 3 months
Very strong player retention even if you look several months later.

In conclusion, civ7 likely sold an acceptable number of copies, but not enough compared to its predecessors. More importantly, it retains players worse than civ5 or civ6 - though not disastrously so. It doesn’t look like a product doomed to be abandoned, but the signs aren't encouraging either. I think retention rate would have to be much worse than it currently is.

Civ6 may have ridden the momentum of Civ5's success. Being part of a longstanding franchise brings heavy expectations, and I believe Civ8 will face serious challenges if it hopes to regain its predecessor's appeal. Something was was lost in civ6 and that continued in civ7. The "Ed Beach" era.

It's like macroeconomics - you won't see immediate results until many years later. Firaxis might think Civ6 was a major success, but I'd argue it was propped up by the goodwill of Civ5. Civ5 was just that succesful. They may have learned the wrong lessons. Civ6 was certainly better than civ7, but just the wrong direction for the franchise. The franchise isn't dead, but the trend is clearly downward.

It's a shame that there is no data for civ4.

Which of those games are available on other stores (e.g. Epic?) Which ones are available on consoles?

I think it's hard to really compare games like that when they're on different platforms.

Do we have estimates for Civ VII console sales?

 

[queenpea]

Which of those games are available on other stores (e.g. Epic?) Which ones are available on consoles?

I think it's hard to really compare games like that when they're on different platforms.

Do we have estimates for Civ VII console sales?

For what it's worth (and it's not worth very much), I haven't seen Civ VII listed as a top-selling Switch 2 game anywhere. I'm not sure that is surprising or even data at this point.

 

[GeneralZift]

Humankind
Release: 55,284
1 month: 10,017
2 months: 3,022
3 months: 2,419
Developers eventually bought themselves out from SEGA and "went back to their roots" (paraphrasing) with Endless Legend 2
Player drop: 95% in 3 months

To be honest, Humankind could have been gas. I actually think the base was really good - just that some few mechanics ruined it, and some mechanics were actually not that bad.

It died because nobody liked the Civ switching. I maintain it's a bad idea, period. But I also think their weird War System with forced Peace was also stupid.
Also when you fight, you open a tactical battle on a strategic map. Which I think is signature of endless games, but I also found it tedious, to the point I started skipping them.

But yeah, the government system was super cool. The art and music was amazing. I can't believe they gave up on making some kind of sequel to fix the fundamental issues - they could have destroyed Civ.

Many of these games suffer from being overly restrictive and overly designed, it somehow railroads the experience and can make it tedious. That's probably why you see player numbers drop soo much.

 

[Xur]

You mean people have been playing Civ6 for eight years now though they did not like it but because they liked Civ5 so much? Consider me sceptic. Why would they not continue playing Civ5 in that case? I have been playing Civ6 because I think it is a really good game. I have also played EU4 quite a lot but if the next iteration does not look good to me I won't play it. Same as with Civ7. And I think I am not alone with that behaviour.

No, the initial sale was good partly because of civ5. But it never retained the same percentage or gained over the span of its' life. I know it's anecdotal when I say, I did not pre-order civ7 because of civ6. I was excited for civ7, but didn't pre-order or buy it. A mix of previous game and new features. I think many are in that situation. I was in that situation with civ6. I loved civ5, so pre-ordered civ6 and was disappointed. My purchase still counts in favor of civ6 - even though it was mostly civ5 that gained them that sale.