Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[youngsteve]

The curious takeaway is that the community is far more interested in bickering about 1% up or down changes in concurrent player numbers than things like discussing strategy, tips, multiplayer, or other aspects of the game.




How many months/years did Civ VI trail Civ 4 after release?

Sensible comments like this, are not what many on here want to hear. Must admit I have never seen a major game struggling so much against its ancient predecessors like this one.

 

[Kev1916]

Sensible comments like this, are not what many on here want to hear. Must admit I have never seen a major game struggling so much against its ancient predecessors like this one.

Aye, white mice round and round they go

 

[GeneralZift]

Hey, only negative news is allowed here!

I'd post something negative, but I'll have to look for some source that doesn't support my point first.

Ah you're right... I think with my totally unbiased mind, I will look at the negatively trending statistics and determine that only positive news can be insinuated from it.
I do have positive news actually! The way things are going we might see the next game sooner than expected

 

[Leucarum]

I agree that this sort of dip below the previous title is par for the course. I presumed a more interesting/comparable metric would be how big a proportion of its playerbase stuck around after the immediate release.

I did a back of the envelope piece of math, looking at steamdb if you take average weekly players then from peak to trough in the first 6 months :

Civ7 retained ~9% of its players (~8K Trough, ~85K Peak)
Civ6 retained ~13% of its players (~21K trough, ~162K Peak)
Civ5 retained a whopping ~31% of its players (Also ~21K trough, but from ~70K Peak) though Civ5's highest peak was far later after release than 6 or 7. I guess 5 is a different kettle of fish, with much less attrition, or there's something up with the stats I was using?

So that is worse for 7 but not by as crazy a % as you might presume from some of the discourse. So it's seemingly the comparative numbers between titles which look worst for Civ7, using the same average weekly players metric only achieving a peak of half Civ6 is a bad look, while even at its lowest point Civ V had more than double the players. But there are for sure caveats there...

Maybe we surmise that 7 didn't come out of the gates as hot as 6, had an attrition rate that was only slightly worse than Civ6, but that's still enough to leave it lagging 5 and 6 since it had a lower high point?

 

[fantsu]

How many months/years did Civ VI trail Civ 4 after release?

As a big fan of both it still does.
So far being the "even" Civ games that I love the most (2, 4, 6).
And odds are hit-or-miss.

My personal head canon for Civ-series.
Still.. 4 takes the lead. And who even cares about the sales? Videogaming wasnt the largest media around at IV release like its now.
Its still the one all others get compared, (and quite a large margin) the best one to be played vanilla, or warlords, or bts official releases. Unmodded paradise.

Steam is for those who dont understand folders of UI (be it mac or win) on PC, only reason to pay Valve-tax and not to really own physical media, beside laziness.

 

[itix]

I think that we're gone over this enough times already. Fifteen years, numerous very good sales, a stable multi-player scene, and a whole bunch of mods will get you a lot of players. Civ VII has only had about 10 months and a couple of very minor sales. Give it some time!

As reported before, Civ VI trailed V in players for about 1.5 years after release.

More than 1,5 years, actually. But problem is that Civ 6 is running away. Lets look at numbers.

At this time of writing, Civ V has 15,889 players, Civ VI has 37,678 players and Civ VII has 7,666. To catch up with Civ V, Civ7 must double its player numbers. To catch up with Civ VI, it has to more than quadruple its player numbers. And that is with current numbers. 8 months or 12 months later, it could be worse.

It seems unlikely that Civ VII can catch up Civ 6, Civ 5 is possible.

Blue: Civ 5, Green: Civ 6, Red: Civ 7

Gap between Civ 7 and Civ 6 is larger than gap between Civ 6 and Civ 5 after the release.

Yea yea, Civ 7 was launched simultaneously to many platforms. But Civ 6 is available now on multiple platforms.

Lets align to the release date:

Civ 7 is obviously a loser there. To stay on par with Civ5 and Civ6, Civ 7 is missing at least 1.2M owners. Are they all playing on consoles?

I agree that this sort of dip below the previous title is par for the course. I presumed a more interesting/comparable metric would be how big a proportion of its playerbase stuck around after the immediate release.

I did a back of the envelope piece of math, looking at steamdb if you take average weekly players then from peak to trough in the first 6 months :

Civ7 retained ~9% of its players (~8K Trough, ~85K Peak)
Civ6 retained ~13% of its players (~21K trough, ~162K Peak)
Civ5 retained a whopping ~31% of its players (Also ~21K trough, but from ~70K Peak) though Civ5's highest peak was far later after release than 6 or 7. I guess 5 is a different kettle of fish, with much less attrition, or there's something up with the stats I was using?

I assume that at that time, Steam was still relatively young and growing in popularity, and many early copies were sold by other channels.

Steam is for those who dont understand folders of UI (be it mac or win) on PC, only reason to pay Valve-tax and not to really own physical media, beside laziness.

I got old and grew tired of tinkering

 

[Kwami]

I assume that at that time, Steam was still relatively young and growing in popularity, and many early copies were sold by other channels.

Steam was fairly young at the time, but V was only released on Steam, right? You could buy a physical copy at the store, but it was still linked to Steam.

I remember not playing V for quite some time because I didn't want to install Steam or support that sort of nonsense. I finally caved after Gods & Kings was released because it was obvious that Steam was here to stay and that most people don't care about abusive corporations and an erosion of rights.

 

[Leucarum]

I assume that at that time, Steam was still relatively young and growing in popularity, and many early copies were sold by other channels.

I'd find it just as compelling an argument that the franchise hit something close to AAA status with Civ6, or midway through Civ5, so 5 was being sold more to a core audience initially. Hence the better retention. Either way 5 behaved differently on Steam to 6 and 7.

It seems unlikely that Civ VII can catch up Civ 6, Civ 5 is possible.

It's certainly doing worse than 5 and 6 at present but that's not neccessarily an indicator of how things will go. Just that Firaxis have a mountain to climb.

 

[itix]

Steam was fairly young at the time, but V was only released on Steam, right? You could buy a physical copy at the store, but it was still linked to Steam.

I remember not playing V for quite some time because I didn't want to install Steam or support that sort of nonsense. I finally caved after Gods & Kings was released because it was obvious that Steam was here to stay and that most people don't care about abusive corporations and an erosion of rights.

That is something I didnt know (I was playing on consoles only at that time) and had to ask AI, but that appears to be the case. Physical copies had to be activated on Steam and are counted as Steam players.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I agree that this sort of dip below the previous title is par for the course. I presumed a more interesting/comparable metric would be how big a proportion of its playerbase stuck around after the immediate release.

I did a back of the envelope piece of math, looking at steamdb if you take average weekly players then from peak to trough in the first 6 months :

Civ7 retained ~9% of its players (~8K Trough, ~85K Peak)
Civ6 retained ~13% of its players (~21K trough, ~162K Peak)
Civ5 retained a whopping ~31% of its players (Also ~21K trough, but from ~70K Peak) though Civ5's highest peak was far later after release than 6 or 7. I guess 5 is a different kettle of fish, with much less attrition, or there's something up with the stats I was using?

So that is worse for 7 but not by as crazy a % as you might presume from some of the discourse. So it's seemingly the comparative numbers between titles which look worst for Civ7, using the same average weekly players metric only achieving a peak of half Civ6 is a bad look, while even at its lowest point Civ V had more than double the players. But there are for sure caveats there...

Maybe we surmise that 7 didn't come out of the gates as hot as 6, had an attrition rate that was only slightly worse than Civ6, but that's still enough to leave it lagging 5 and 6 since it had a lower high point?

Measuring retention would only make sense if there would be not further units sold. With Civ6 being sold for 9 years with lowest price point at $3, current player base has little to do with the original number.

What we see here is the same as we see on any other numbers - Civ7 is young and didn't have massive discounts yet.

 

[Leucarum]

Measuring retention would only make sense if there would be not further units sold. With Civ6 being sold for 9 years with lowest price point at $3, current player base has little to do with the original number.

What we see here is the same as we see on any other numbers - Civ7 is young and didn't have massive discounts yet.

I focussed on the first 6 months post release for each game for this reason. Since we only have that window available for Civ7 I wanted to make something comaprable. I.e. how well did each game do over a comparable timeframe.

I think maybe you missed that, but your point is the entire reason I approached it that way.

This isn't an attempt to look at any of the consequences of DLCs. My question is how does deep is the "hole" Firaxis are digging themselves out off relative to 5 and 6. And honestly I think it comes off looking surprisingly good for 7. The % drop is not that different to that of 6. It just doesn't seem to have come out of the gate as hot so the absolute numbers are low...

 

[aelf]

Ah you're right... I think with my totally unbiased mind, I will look at the negatively trending statistics and determine that only positive news can be insinuated from it.
I do have positive news actually! The way things are going we might see the next game sooner than expected

Maybe you can find a quote by Ed Beach talking about Civ7's ages system and determine that Firaxis is already working on the next game: Humankind 3.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I focussed on the first 6 months post release for each game for this reason. Since we only have that window available for Civ7 I wanted to make something comaprable. I.e. how well did each game do over a comparable timeframe.

I think maybe you missed that, but your point is the entire reason I approached it that way. I'm not even using the current numbers for Civ7 in that contrast as I suspect they're still in flux (and you could do the same at each month out if you want to be very pedantic).

Yep, sorry, I missed this.

Yes, that way it makes much more sense. Still, there are huge factors affecting post-launch sales. Civ6 had much bigger discounts and much earlier, plus Christmas holiday season affected both Civ5 and Civ6 and many more.

Still, those numbers mostly tell us about worse Civ7 post-launch sales. I guess it's not something many people would argue about.

 

[Leucarum]

Yep, sorry, I missed this.

Yes, that way it makes much more sense. Still, there are huge factors affecting post-launch sales. Civ6 had much bigger discounts and much earlier, plus Christmas holiday season affected both Civ5 and Civ6 and many more.

Still, those numbers mostly tell us about worse Civ7 post-launch sales. I guess it's not something many people would argue about.

It does suggest that despite the lower sales than 6, the % of players still playing isn't as much reduced. I expected a bigger gulf. Even though the absolute numbers are really bad that's a positive crumb...

 

[Xandinho]

More than 1,5 years, actually. But problem is that Civ 6 is running away. Lets look at numbers.

At this time of writing, Civ V has 15,889 players, Civ VI has 37,678 players and Civ VII has 7,666. To catch up with Civ V, Civ7 must double its player numbers. To catch up with Civ VI, it has to more than quadruple its player numbers. And that is with current numbers. 8 months or 12 months later, it could be worse.

It seems unlikely that Civ VII can catch up Civ 6, Civ 5 is possible.

View attachment 745206
Blue: Civ 5, Green: Civ 6, Red: Civ 7

Gap between Civ 7 and Civ 6 is larger than gap between Civ 6 and Civ 5 after the release.

Yea yea, Civ 7 was launched simultaneously to many platforms. But Civ 6 is available now on multiple platforms.

Lets align to the release date:

View attachment 745207
Civ 7 is obviously a loser there. To stay on par with Civ5 and Civ6, Civ 7 is missing at least 1.2M owners. Are they all playing on consoles?

I assume that at that time, Steam was still relatively young and growing in popularity, and many early copies were sold by other channels.


I got old and grew tired of tinkering

It’s interesting to note that Civ6 only definitively surpassed Civ5 in 2019, the same year Gathering Storm was released. Not even Rise and Fall was enough to keep the game consistently above Civ5.

 

[stealth_nsk]

It does suggest that despite the lower sales than 6, the % of players still playing isn't as much reduced. I expected a bigger gulf. Even though the absolute numbers are really bad that's a positive crumb...

The problem here as usual is that our data is terribly indirect. Average number of simultaneous players is the number of active players multiplied my average number of hours played (and divided by number of hours). So, without knowing the average number of hours (which could depend on any things, including shorter games with ages), we can't really calculate number of active players. Much less we could guess sales and retention - we know some people come, some go, either permanent or temporary, but without additional data points, there are no insights there.

So, yes, I agree that comparing retention number with similar data from Civ6 and Civ5 probably says that Civ7 isn't doing that good, it's pretty impossible to say how bad.

 

[Leucarum]

The problem here as usual is that our data is terribly indirect. Average number of simultaneous players is the number of active players multiplied my average number of hours played (and divided by number of hours). So, without knowing the average number of hours (which could depend on any things, including shorter games with ages), we can't really calculate number of active players. Much less we could guess sales and retention - we know some people come, some go, either permanent or temporary, but without additional data points, there are no insights there.

So, yes, I agree that comparing retention number with similar data from Civ6 and Civ5 probably says that Civ7 isn't doing that good, it's pretty impossible to say how bad.

If the data's not ideal, at least we can try and make it comparable.

The game I am worried about making a comparison to is 5 since it looks like behaviour was very different and it's tough to say if that was down to how/which types of players used steam, were playing Civilization, or a genuine difference.

 

[stealth_nsk]

If the data's not ideal, at least we can try and make it comparable.

The game I am worried about making a comparison to is 5 since it looks like behaviour was very different and it's tough to say if that was down to how/which types of players used steam, were playing Civilization, or a genuine difference.

Civ5 was released 15 years ago, everything was different at that time. Competition, the way people games, internet, and we all. There are too many factors at play to analyze with one indirect metric.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

Must admit I have never seen a major game struggling so much against its ancient predecessors like this one.

You don't have to look far. Just look at Civ VI taking over 2 years to gain more players than Civ V, almost 3 years to clearly pass it.

Civ5 retained a whopping ~31% of its players (Also ~21K trough, but from ~70K Peak) though Civ5's highest peak was far later after release than 6 or 7. I guess 5 is a different kettle of fish, with much less attrition, or there's something up with the stats I was using?

I can think of a few reasons it retained so many more:

1. Far less competition in 2010 on Steam (and the entertainment industry) than in 2016 or 2025 - Civ V had the highest peak on Steam out of any 2010 game.
2. Civ V was much cheaper than VI or VII and was on sale for 25% by Christmas, and after a year it was on sale for $14 (according to post from October 2011 on a different website). In comparison, VI had only been on sale for 10% by Christmas and the lowest it was available for in the first year was $36.VII didn't have a sale within the first 4 months and so far after 8.5 months the lowest it has been available for on Steam is $49.
3. Big graphical leap from Civ IV to V. V is closer to VII than IV is to V.

 

[Leucarum]

You don't have to look far. Just look at Civ VI taking over 2 years to gain more players than Civ V, almost 3 years to clearly pass it.


I can think of a few reasons it retained so many more:

1. Far less competition in 2010 on Steam (and the entertainment industry) than in 2016 or 2025 - Civ V had the highest peak on Steam out of any 2010 game.
2. Civ V was much cheaper than VI or VII and was on sale for 25% by Christmas, and after a year it was on sale for $14 (according to post from October 2011 on a different website). In comparison, VI had only been on sale for 10% by Christmas and the lowest it was available for in the first year was $36.VII didn't have a sale within the first 4 months and so far after 8.5 months the lowest it has been available for on Steam is $49.
3. Big graphical leap from Civ IV to V. V is closer to VII than IV is to V.

All those reasons could be valid, but it could also just be that steam was very different and we aren't capturing something comparable in the first instance...