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Ars Technica: Steam Gauge Data of the most popular titles in 2014

Grief.exe

Member
What a damper. Maybe if Ars made this a monthly rather than a yearly article, they would have realized they are counting free weekend 'copies' and find a way to filter them out.

Now we have to look which games had Free Weekends and label the data for those games 'meaningless'.

NBA 2K15 appears in the best-selling steam games in 2014 chart with 3.8M but not in the most owned 2014 releases on Steam, even though it should be 5th there. So even with their mistake of counting free weekend copies why doesn't the game show up in both charts? Did they realize their mistake but only revised one of the charts?

The answer?

Someone smart had to set up the data collection, but a journalist had to write the article.

Is it just me or there's a problem with the list?

xG8PJ2A.png

They had formatting issues in the last article as well.
 

Tagyhag

Member
I'm not surprised Unturned is so high. It's a fun game, with competent mp, f2p and the premium upgrade is just $5.

The dev is also a cool dude, very open to suggestions and updates the game at a frequent pace. He deserves all that popularity.
 
Sucks that Crimzon Clover didn't make the cut.
This +1000. It's the first thing I looked for in the extended list.

Best thing that could happen to the STG genre would be Crimzon Clover getting a PS4 port with a free PS+ month.

About the only thing close to that would be a big translated PS4+Steam bundle from Cave and MOSS, also with some PS+ and Steam Sale love.
 

Saty

Member
Ars also changed the method form web scraping to using an API Valve provided. Kyle Orland in the comments section:
Unfortunately, Steam is _really_ against the idea of my continuing to use web scraping to get data (somewhat understandably... it's hard on their servers). I hope to work out why TF2 and Dota 2 aren't appearing soon, but I don't think it's reason to mistrust the rest of the numbers, which match up between the API and web site.
This raises a possibility that there are more games that are 'missing'.

He also comments about the Free Weekends:
Free-to-play weekends skew things during the weekends, showing tons of new "owners," -- but that skew goes away afterwards, as it reverts back to only people who actually own it. Not an issue here.

Dead Island Epidemic "owners" data is skewed by giveaways, but the players" numbers are only people who actually tried it.
While i would like to believe that, i very much doubt 3.8 million people bought NBA2K15 up until mid-February.
What happens if i played the game in the free weekend and got an achievement? How would that show up after the Free Weekend ends? Maybe there's an issue with the API they are using?
This needs a further look.
 

Kinthalis

Banned
Am i missing something? I have a hard time believing that these numbers are true. Doesn't Sega provide pretty detailed numbers for their titles? Don't think company of heroes 2 and total war rome 2 were anywhere near those 4 million they claim. Or doesn't Sega count digital? Or do i read it wrong?

Sega has said that Total War games, even on a year without a new release, sells 2 million copies at least.
 

Nzyme32

Member
Jesus that Civ data.

Less than half the people that own it have even played it.

I think maybe it kind of demonstrates the issues of it's quality of Civ BE when compared to Civ V, which doesn't have that issue in the previous data. I think people ordered it and heard the issues and tuned out, or got carried away by Civ V
 

Almighty

Member
Well that list just confirms what i already thought I am an old man with niche tastes. I don't even recognize half the games in that first pic and had to google Unturned. The raw data was nice. 400k for Wasteland 2, 800k for Divinity: Orginal Sin, and 300k for Shadowrun is music to my ears. Though I wish the count of people who actually played it was a bit higher on some games.
 

draetenth

Member
Man, I like to think I'm pretty in-the-know when it comes to games.

I've heard of, maybe, 6 games out of both of those lists. What the hell is Unturned?

I have never heard of the majority of those games, especially the ones in the top half

Wow.

I check out the Steam store every damn day and I've never heard of Unturned, or a few more of them.

Yeah, what these people said. I'm even using that Steam explorer to help build my wishlist, follow games, and tell which games I'm not interested in... I've had numerous F2P games on the list because they are popular so how did I miss most of these?

Skyrim isn't surprise - very mod friendly + a couple of sales which got people who didn't own the Legendary/GOTY edition and console players looking to play the game again with mods would have kept it alive.

Decent showing for the KS games like Divinity: OS - though I wish it was higher...

Things like this are what makes me curious about Origin. How much money is EA leaving behind by keeping full control and never selling on Steam? If they really wanted people on Origin, I'm surprised they don't do it like Ubisoft - sell games on Steam, but require Origin to run. I guess they really do want full control/100% of sales...
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
Also, remember this thread?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=982568

Octodad: Dadliest Catch (up to January 28th, 2015) - 459,735
PC (61.1%) - 280,898
PS4 (32.6%) - 143,874
Mac (5.5%) - 25,285
Linux (0.8%) - 3,678

Octodad: Dadliest Catch Steam Owners (up to February 26th, 2015) - 279,272

In the case of Octodad, there doesn't seem to be such a big difference, after all.
 

Dr.Acula

Banned
Skyrim sells so much because they sell the Legendary edition (base game + DLC) for cheaper than the price of the individual DLC combined. So basically, most people have bought the game twice.
 

inky

Member
I check out the Steam store every damn day and I've never heard of Unturned, or a few more of them.

I've heard of it once or twice, but the concurrent/peak stats don't suggest that kind of popularity.

Without really knowing anything about it, I'm gonna take a bold guess and say it's one of those games that got a Pewdiepie popularity boost.
 

Kinthalis

Banned
Skyrim sells so much because they sell the Legendary edition (base game + DLC) for cheaper than the price of the individual DLC combined. So basically, most people have bought the game twice.

Even if that's true, that wouldn't count towards the number of sales, or at least I don't think they would count the same account more than once.
 
Skyrim sells so much because they sell the Legendary edition (base game + DLC) for cheaper than the price of the individual DLC combined. So basically, most people have bought the game twice.

Yeah they do this with Dishonored too, that's why I still haven't bought any DLC for those games.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
I am really shocked about Unturned having that many installs. Currently, it would be the most owned game in the survival genre (DayZ, Rust, etc).

Uh... not that hard to understand.

1) Free to play (though you can support the developer for $5)
2) Said developer listens to feedback and implements it if he can (despite being 17-18-19[?] years old and busy with school)
3) Big one: ABLE TO BE PLAYED OFFLINE/single-player. Something DayZ and Rust refuse to acknowledge because LOL WE'RE DEATHMATCH DRESSED UP WITH AI ZOMBIES/other shit for Rust
4) As per above: Zombies are the stars here and not window dressing

Problem is the zombies continue to chase you forever, same with DayZ's really but I'm hoping the developer gets around to fixing that with maybe the night cycle making it harder for them to track you or something.
 

Cels

Member
divinity:OS at 37.5M hours played, well worth it

and I'm 100 of that

Even if that's true, that wouldn't count towards the number of sales, or at least I don't think they would count the same account more than once.

right, unless these people are buying it on a separate account then it would still only show as 1 account owning 1 copy of skyrim
 

madjoki

Member
Could the recent free weekends have something to do with this?
Ars also changed the method form web scraping to using an API Valve provided. Kyle Orland in the comments section:

This raises a possibility that there are more games that are 'missing'.

He also comments about the Free Weekends:

While i would like to believe that, i very much doubt 3.8 million people bought NBA2K15 up until mid-February.
What happens if i played the game in the free weekend and got an achievement? How would that show up after the Free Weekend ends? Maybe there's an issue with the API they are using?
This needs a further look.

I have done similar datamining and free weekend games do not disappear instantly.
This is API thing, it won't show on website, but do show via API.

CoD AW is good example of this: (This is from my data, not ARS)

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - Multiplayer: 3 891 960
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare: 613 226

I noticed this problem on my data collection.

My initial solution was to force rescan for those who own a game that was in "free weekend" offer after it has expired.
It did not help much.
I even forced update for all users and found implausible large number of new "owners".

Unfortunately I deleted this data already.

But look at this Civilization Beyond Earth graph:

fEoGLes.png


500k before free weekend. Supposedly it has sold now 2m+ acording to ars.

1.5m in two months? yeah right.
 

vocab

Member
Man, I like to think I'm pretty in-the-know when it comes to games.

I've heard of, maybe, 6 games out of both of those lists. What the hell is Unturned?

Some of those most owned games are free to play and complete shit. Counter strike nexion zombies is a laughable joke.
 

ArjanN

Member
I must be really out of touch since I have never heard of Overturned or Robocraft.

Nah, that stuff just doesn't get a lot of play on GAF, or the gaming media for that matter.

Kinda feels like that all falls into the alternate Pewdiepie/Minecraft/Angry Birds/F2P alternate universe, that doesn't really seem to have much overlap with ours.
 

Bluth54

Member
Glad to see Ars did a list of the top sells of 2014, some very interesting info there.

I'm very happy to see Rise of Nations: Extended Edition sold so well, it's my favorite RTS of all time and it really does deserve those sales figures.
 

patapuf

Member
Where are the AAA games?

Blizzard and EA don't sell on steam.

Ubi has a really bad rep and i think their retail stuff isn't steamworks (do sellers like GMG and Amazon sell Uplay or steam codes?).

COD doesn't sell much on PC anymore.

Also, despite the stereotype. High production values don't (or rarely) mean much for PC sucess.
 
The answer?

Someone smart had to set up the data collection, but a journalist had to write the article.



They had formatting issues in the last article as well.

Do you think free weekends really matter that much?

I've never once been tempted by a free weekend personally, to be honest I don't remember paying much attention to the concept.

The way I feel is, if I wont give you $20, I'm not going to give you my time because...well fuck it it's free.

For the same reason I don't free to play games. My time matters more than money.
 

kswiston

Member
For the same reason I don't free to play games. My time matters more than money.

I think you underestimate how many 12-16 year olds with very limited incomes and all the time in the world play games on Steam. When I was a kid, I was all over shareware games, and those were basically short demos. I would have been in heaven if "Free Weekends" existed back then.

Sure, most of use ignore free Weekends, but Steam has 100M users (or whatever). Even 2-3% of them taking advantage of free weekends is going to heavily skew numbers.
 

cripterion

Member
Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 doing so well is puzzling considering the pc version is just an afterthought for the devs.
 

Bluth54

Member
Where are the AAA games?

They aren't in the top 10 but there are plenty of "AAA" games on the list with some decent sales.

14 Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor 977790
17 DARK SOULS II 964266
20 South Park: The Stick of Truth 929442
29 Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel 741457
30 Thief 971028
32 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare 787439
37 Wolfenstein: The New Order 602159
45 Watch_Dogs 422965
46 Ultra Street Fighter IV 451366
57 METAL GEAR RISING: REVENGEANCE 444266
66 Far Cry 4 322887
68 Alien: Isolation 329649
88 The Evil Within 250533
115 Assassin’s Creed Unity 179532
 
Z

ZombieFred

Unconfirmed Member
They aren't in the top 10 but there are plenty of "AAA" games on the list with some decent sales.

14 Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor 977790
17 DARK SOULS II 964266
20 South Park: The Stick of Truth 929442
29 Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel 741457
30 Thief 971028
32 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare 787439
37 Wolfenstein: The New Order 602159
45 Watch_Dogs 422965
46 Ultra Street Fighter IV 451366
57 METAL GEAR RISING: REVENGEANCE 444266
66 Far Cry 4 322887
68 Alien: Isolation 329649
88 The Evil Within 250533
115 Assassin’s Creed Unity 179532

Holy jesus.
 

draetenth

Member
Uh... not that hard to understand.

1) Free to play (though you can support the developer for $5)
2) Said developer listens to feedback and implements it if he can (despite being 17-18-19[?] years old and busy with school)
3) Big one: ABLE TO BE PLAYED OFFLINE/single-player. Something DayZ and Rust refuse to acknowledge because LOL WE'RE DEATHMATCH DRESSED UP WITH AI ZOMBIES/other shit for Rust
4) As per above: Zombies are the stars here and not window dressing

Problem is the zombies continue to chase you forever, same with DayZ's really but I'm hoping the developer gets around to fixing that with maybe the night cycle making it harder for them to track you or something.

That... actually sounds pretty good (bolded is huge for me). Maybe I will give Unturned a try someday.
 

Carlius

Banned
is that true for nba2k15? my mind is blown if true. ridiculous, and holy shit at thief sales. dissapointed in dark souls 2 sales. expected though, 77k peak players is about 700k copies sold, so i think the data is accurate in terms of sales. 964k sounds about right if the initial hit was 700k. i was really hoping it would at least break the 1 million mark, specially at the rate in which it was first sold.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
Since we've seen Transitor and Octodad sales...what about another indie hit, Shovel Knight?

Shovel Knight - up to February 26th, 2015 - 208,609

Known sales results

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=868871

First week - 75,000

PC (38%) - 28,500
3DS (35%) - 26,250*
Wii U (27%) - 20,250*

First month - 180,000

PC - Steam (37%) - 66,600
3DS (33%) - 59,400*
Wii U (27%) - 48,600*
Humble (2%) - 3,600
GOG (1%) - 1,800

* = US/Canada only

Up to December 4th, 2014 - 300,000+

By adding Steam onwers up to February 26th and just the first month on 3DS, Wii U, Humble and GOG, we have 322,009 sales. But of course it's higher than that. As known, 3DS and Wii U SKUs were released first in US and many months later they saw the European release.

Also, let's look at how the game sold on Steam after the first month
First month - 66,000
LTD up to February 26th, 2015 - 208,609
Sales in between - 142,609

Thus, it sold more than double what it did in the first month. Both Steam and 3DS/Wii U version received a 33% sale price around the same time; also, 3DS/Wii U released in Europe in November. So, while I don't think that the game had the same first month-to-LTD multiplier the Steam version had (LTD = 3.161x First month; Sales in between = 2.161x First month). I think it's possible that Nintendo versions had a good trend after the first month as well, considering the spreaded release. Something like LTD = 2x First month and Sales in between = First month sounds reasonable to me. In that case, we'd have 3DS + Wii U = 216,000, and overall sales around 430,000 copies. But these last numbers are estimates based on suppositions, remember: far from official stats.
 

Opiate

Member
Where are the AAA games?

Their absence helps explain why there is this seeming disparity in how big PC gaming is claimed to be and how relatively little EA/Take 2/Ubisoft/etc. sell on the platform.

Games are selling; it's not mostly their games. In addition to Steam, you have Blizzard, Riot, Chinese and Korean developers, gambling, flash/browser games like Farmville.... basically everything you can think of, except for the biggest console-centric publishers.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
...Actually I need to correct myself about Shovel Knight. Going by Steam owners' number, we can say that the game is surely at 362,609, with over 100,000 copies from 3DS alone? Why? Easy. Remember when beril talked about Gunman Clive sales, a month ago?

400,000 copies sold WW across all versions
80%+ from 3DS version alone.
Regional splits: America - 43%; Japan - 40%; Europe - 17%
Which results in around 136,700 copies sold in America alone. SInce America is not just US, I've put the safest estimate for its sales in US at 100,000. Now, take a look at this

U.S. 3DS All-Time Download-only Sales (through Feb 12, 2015)
Note: Bundled/Ambassador games are not included. Basically just anything you had to click on 'purchase' button to get that at some point in its life cost money. Also, download codes count toward these totals.
01./01. [3DS] Pokemon Dream Radar (Nintendo/Pokemon Co.)
02./03. [3DS] Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS (Nintendo)
03./02. [3DS] The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (Nintendo)
04./04. [3DS] Animal Crossing: New Leaf (Nintendo) (~120K as of Aug 15, 2013)
05./13. [3DS] Mario Kart 7 (Nintendo)
06./05. [3DS] 3D Classics: Kirby's Adventure (Nintendo)
07./06. [3DS] Pushmo (Nintendo)
08./07. [3DS] Pokemon X (Nintendo/Pokemon Co.)
09./08. [3DS] Fire Emblem: Awakening (Nintendo) (~80K as of Apr 18, 2013)
10./09. [3DS] Pokemon Y (Nintendo/Pokemon Co.)
11./10. [3DS] 3D Classics: Kid Icarus (Nintendo)
12./11. [3DS] Colors! 3D (Collecting Smiles)
13./16. [3DS] Shovel Knight (Yacht Club Games)
14./12. [3DS] Pokedex 3D Pro (Nintendo/Pokemon Co.)
15./14. [3DS] Gunman Clive (Bertil Horberg)
16./15. [3DS] Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies (Capcom)
17./19. [3DS] The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (Nintendo)
18./17. [3DS] New Super Mario Bros. 2 (Nintendo)
19./20. [3DS] Super Mario 3D Land (Nintendo)
20./18. [3DS] Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (Nintendo) (~50K as of Apr 18, 2013)

This is the last All-Time 3DS Only US Chart posted and Shovel Knight is higher than Gunman Clive. So, if GC is over 100,000, SK 3DS is over 100,000 as well. Also, this just by considering US sales.
 

Saty

Member
Their absence helps explain why there is this seeming disparity in how big PC gaming is claimed to be and how relatively little EA/Take 2/Ubisoft/etc. sell on the platform.

Games are selling; it's not mostly their games. In addition to Steam, you have Blizzard, Riot, Chinese and Korean developers, gambling, flash/browser games like Farmville.... basically everything you can think of, except for the biggest console-centric publishers.
Well, of course this data is irrelevant for EA games because they aren't sold on Steam. The data is meaningless for Ubisoft's games because the Steam version is only when you buy it through Steam (all other e-tailers and retail sales are Uplay keys).

When it comes to the pubs were the Steam copies signify most\all sales of the game, the sales are decent+.
Let us not forget that we need to do per-platform comparison. So it would be interesting to see how The Evil Within or Wolfenstien sales on PC compare each console platform. But alas that's never going to happen. Only option is to compare to NPD insider data whenever that happens.
 
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