Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[tman2000]

Was there an old thread for suggestions, particularly on how to tackle a classic mode?

Yeah it should be searchable. It was also a discussion of what the community probably wants from such a change.

I thought personally that you can simply have soft transitions with a rubber band effect (on tech costs per age), and default civs if you choose not to civ switch. I would also extend the sense of continuity by bridging some systems between ages, i.e.: religion begins in late antiquity, and factories begin in late exploration. I think the only additional need change would be aged warehouses where you can't overbuild last age's warehouse until you've built the new age's warehouse, but you could overbuild a warehouse with a warehouse.

I also felt age based yield increase should be flattened to smooth the difference between the performance of buildings, specialists should be replaced with general specialists (one per yield type per age per city, paid for with food).

The would result in you being able to continue to build last age units and buildings in the next age until you were ready to upgrade a city, perhaps with a strategically timed overbuilding bonus. A concession to this idea is that tier 3 units would now be equal in strength to a tier 1.5 of the next age, so developing them and retaining them would be worthwhile, but only until other players achieve tier 2 tech.

 

[tman2000]

5% growth - if retained - is actually very significant growth.

This will cause:

If Firaxis can start a concurrent user climb over time,

This to be impossible.

This is the issue we keep trying to bring up. The game isn't fun and needs a major overhaul, not patches that coincide with a marketing push.

Marketing can get 5% more eyeballs, but the game experience will do more harm than the marketing. There's a very clear discourse around "Civ games tend to be fixed long after release, and aren't fun until then." Some amount of that sentiment will drive active user increases when updates occur. If the updates don't improve the game, it reduces the ability of future updates to continue to accomplish the same effect.

I know we could easily beat a dead horse here, but apropos the topic of active player counts, whether it's hype, hope, whatever, this game won't build a larger audience until it addresses some of the extremely well articulated concerns shared by most of the potential audience. Like, we can keep dismissing them as unrealistic, talk about Switch 2 user numbers. There's still an elephant in the room.

Internet negativity is not why people turned off of Civ 7, and so positive news won't be enough to turn "momentum" around. It's not momentum. It's the base product. There's a fundamental reality about the base product and its relationship to player counts that can't be avoided. This reality goes beyond opinion.

 

[Siddorm]

"Interesting" is a pretty abstract way. The metric was designed to measure health of MP games and as such it's useful, but for the rest it doesn't lead to any reasonable conclusions. Abstract popularity is something we sure could speak about, but extrapolating it in any way to past of future sales doesn't work.

It's funny to watch, sure.

I am thinking that simultaneous player numbers is a main topic for this thread. Do you think we should be attempting to do predictive modeling of future sales? I don't, because we don't have access to sufficient data to do it meaningfully. And focusing solely on number of owners and number of active players would make no sense to me; it would be way too simplistic.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I am thinking that simultaneous player numbers is a main topic for this thread. Do you think we should be attempting to do predictive modeling of future sales? I don't, because we don't have access to sufficient data to do it meaningfully. And focusing solely on number of owners and number of active players would make no sense to me; it would be way too simplistic.

The topic of this thread is "Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread". Simultaneous player number is one of the player stats, yes, but the rest of the topic has no connection to it. So reducing this thread to just monitoring ups and downs of simultaneous player number is quite a sad view.

 

[Crashdummy]

5% growth - if retained - is actually very significant growth. If Firaxis can start a concurrent user climb over time, that's exactly what they're looking for (slash all 2K care about, which gives us a better outlook for the entry in the longer term).

It's especially significant given that this is the first time such growth has been recorded (and the second time any growth has been recorded, on either peak or average users).

Again, the 5% growth is bases against a very poorly performing september

I think September is an edge case that shouldnt be taken as a single comparison point

July and August had very similar numbers between them, i think those are more interesting benchmarks

 

[Kev1916]

5% growth - if retained - is actually very significant growth. If Firaxis can start a concurrent user climb over time, that's exactly what they're looking for (slash all 2K care about, which gives us a better outlook for the entry in the longer term).

It's especially significant given that this is the first time such growth has been recorded (and the second time any growth has been recorded, on either peak or average users).

No , I doubt it could be called "very significant" , using an average if retained of 5% would take over a 3 y 1/2 years to reach the 40k average at launch .
2k will not hold out that long before plug is pulled

Yes it is significant that growth is recorded, and may well get the wreck back on track, thou I suspect that figures will be lucky to stay at that level

 

[Gorbles]

This will cause:

This to be impossible.

You're welcome to your opinion. I disagree with it, but that's not very useful as a discussion starter

July and August had very similar numbers between them, i think those are more interesting benchmarks

Why are July and August more interesting benchmarks?

No , I doubt it could be called "very significant" , using an average if retained of 5% would take over a 3 y 1/2 years to reach the 40k average at launch .

Yes, the meaning of words tends to be different if you completely change the context, I agree.

 

[Siddorm]

but the rest of the topic has no connection to it.

I don't agree with this.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

Week 35 has just ended for Civ VII. The average peak concurrent players for the week was 9,987, which was the highest since week 14 in the week of May 8th to May 14th.

Week 35 for Civ VI had an average peak concurrent player count of 17,852, this was the week of June 16th to June 22nd 2017.

For the first time, the player retention of Civ VII from week 1 to another week has been better than Civ VI.

Week 1 to week 35:
- Civ VI: 124,300 to 17,852 (85.6% reduction)
- Civ VII: 63,553 to 9,987 (84.3% reduction)

 

[aieeegrunt]

No, thats not enough. That is just a name change, but keepign the game intact as it is

Classic Mode is more than just the Civ name

This will cause:

This to be impossible.

This is the issue we keep trying to bring up. The game isn't fun and needs a major overhaul, not patches that coincide with a marketing push.

Marketing can get 5% more eyeballs, but the game experience will do more harm than the marketing. There's a very clear discourse around "Civ games tend to be fixed long after release, and aren't fun until then." Some amount of that sentiment will drive active user increases when updates occur. If the updates don't improve the game, it reduces the ability of future updates to continue to accomplish the same effect.

I know we could easily beat a dead horse here, but apropos the topic of active player counts, whether it's hype, hope, whatever, this game won't build a larger audience until it addresses some of the extremely well articulated concerns shared by most of the potential audience. Like, we can keep dismissing them as unrealistic, talk about Switch 2 user numbers. There's still an elephant in the room.

Internet negativity is not why people turned off of Civ 7, and so positive news won't be enough to turn "momentum" around. It's not momentum. It's the base product. There's a fundamental reality about the base product and its relationship to player counts that can't be avoided. This reality goes beyond opinion.

“Cosmetic Classic Mode” will not make a difference because it doesn’t address the real root of the problem, which is the Civ Switching/Era Reset mechanic, and how it makes the game unplayable for all of the sandbox emergent story role play people

You could be in the middle of a desperate struggle, or about to complete a conquest, or planning how you are going to develop a city and BAM Bippity Boppity Boo suddenly the war ends, your units teleport and some are deleted, etc.

But it’s fine because you know the transition is coming and can withdraw units into commanders and stop building things that won’t matter blah blah blah right?

WRONG

This is even worse. It’s smacking me in the face with a giant thick plank of HERE IS OUR GAME MECHANIC BECAUSE THIS IS A GAME SO START DOING GAMEY GAME MECHANIC GAMEYNESS.

It’s like the B.S. of doing stupid arbitrary crap for Eurekas and Inspirations or Era score, only dialed up to 11

Hey guys, stop fighting and don’t finish that barbarian off so the slinger can get the credit for the kill so I can get a boost to Archery.

Till you fix that, you won’t fix the problem

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Week 35 has just ended for Civ VII. The average peak concurrent players for the week was 9,987, which was the highest since week 14 in the week of May 8th to May 14th.

Week 35 for Civ VI had an average peak concurrent player count of 17,852, this was the week of June 16th to June 22nd 2017.

For the first time, the player retention of Civ VII from week 1 to another week has been better than Civ VI.

Week 1 to week 35:
- Civ VI: 124,300 to 17,852 (85.6% reduction)
- Civ VII: 63,553 to 9,987 (84.3% reduction)

I think your numbers for Civ 7 are picking up early release periods. Either way, the starting points for the two games are quite different. Civ 6 had a simple launch, Civ 7 had a staggered launch with some people getting the game earlier than others. That impacts the starting point data comparability of the two games as no "week 1" for Civ 7 is going to be the same as week 1 for Civ 6 - either some people wouldn't have had the game, yet, or for some people they'll have already had it for more than one week.

 

[Siddorm]

Moreover, regarding the people that pre-ordered the $130 version, they received that content during that period from week -1 or week 0 to week 34. Also, year (i.e. 2016 or 2025) could be a confounder.

 

[Kev1916]

Yes, the meaning of words tends to be different if you completely change the context, I agree.

I'm glad you agree , maybe the exaggerated claims could be toned down?

2K will be looking for better than such small increased amount and reviews are still negative

 

[Gorbles]

I'm glad you agree , maybe the exaggerated claims could be toned down?

2K will be looking for better than such small increased amount and reviews are still negative

I made no exaggerated claim. I stated my opinion, which you're entirely within rights to disagree with.

Neither of us are 2K, so on the topic of claims, you probably shouldn't jump to claiming to know exactly what they're looking for.

 

[zerokarma]

There's also been a big marketing push and a coincidentally high number of influencer videos proclaiming this path "changes everything and fixes the game."

This sort of phenomenon could bump player numbers a bit, but it risks alienating once the fence players who "won't fall for it again."

Is the fiscal quarter almost up? Maybe short-term gain for long term loss is at play here.

Numbers peaked with the patch update but looks like it's slid back down again, I see lows of around 5000 almost dropping below now.

I think you are right that there is an internal push to try to get some numbers up, try to flush out some short term sales but it's not going to be anything they want it to be.

Take 2 next earnings call is Thursday, November 6, 2025, at 4:30 p.m. EST, it will be interesting to see what info we get out of it regarding Civ 7.

 

[Crashdummy]

Why are July and August more interesting benchmarks?

Because they showed stability and because both of them were, like October, months with patches

July and August are mire similar to October than September was

 

[Gorbles]

Because they showed stability and because both of them were, like October, months with patches

July and August are mire similar to October than September was

Which tells us what?

I'm not seeing anything that leads you to discount September as an outlier just because it happens to be different from other months with patches. If anything, this shows that the September patch contained more changes that players want to see. Map generation was probably quite a big one. Maybe finishing R2R was also relevant? It's obviously difficult to say for sure, and the next 30 days will be useful to see.

Steam Charts apparently wasn't collating regular data before mid-July (hence why the graph is so smooth before then), but you can absolutely see the bump in September. It drops directly afterwards, but as that takes us into this week it's hard to tell if it's just the stat reporting, or not. We need to see the next regular peak for the pattern to make more sense:

 

[Crashdummy]

Which tells us what?

I'm not seeing anything that leads you to discount September as an outlier just because it happens to be different from other months with patches. If anything, this shows that the September patch contained more changes that players want to see. Map generation was probably quite a big one. Maybe finishing R2R was also relevant? It's obviously difficult to say for sure, and the next 30 days will be useful to see.

Steam Charts apparently wasn't collating regular data before mid-July (hence why the graph is so smooth before then), but you can absolutely see the bump in September. It drops directly afterwards, but as that takes us into this week it's hard to tell if it's just the stat reporting, or not. We need to see the next regular peak for the pattern to make more sense:

View attachment 744646

You are really not seeing anything to discount September as an outlier?

Its the ONLY month in the last 4 that had no patch, and the drop is caused because of that. Its clearly an outlier and thats why you cant use it as benmchmark, comparing all the other months that share similar variables and context

Of course getting more data in the future will be better to get a pattern, but such pattern will come from comparisons with July and August, not with September

 

[Evolena]

Yeah, the September Patch was like... one week later than the ones of the previous months, that changes everything.

 

[itix]

Steam DB discards data after few months, keeping only peak/average/dunno data per day.