• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Steam Achievement statistics --> a possible look into real Steam sales numbers?

D

dLMN8R

Member
I just stumbled upon this web site: http://dev.zr40.nl/steam/

The guy who created it made an algorithm that systematically scans every single public Steam Community profile for achievement stats. It takes approximately one month for the system to cover all accounts, based on the stats it shows for the number it covers per day.

Further interesting because Valve just revealed that there are 25 million active accounts, yet only 10 million with Steam Community profiles. This is further reduced when you consider that not every one of the 10 million Steam Community profiles are public.

So, of the 25 million accounts, how many have public Community profiles? 5 million? 9 million?


Either way, look at some of the numbers here: http://dev.zr40.nl/steam/games

Again, the numbers shown only cover public Steam Community profiles, and only 10 million of the 25 million active Steam users have Steam Community accounts to begin with (public or private)

Team Fortress 2 1,740,658
Half-Life 2: Episode Two 1,255,624
Portal Portal 1,247,849
Left 4 Dead 1,216,644
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 1,023,973
Day of Defeat: Source Day of Defeat: Source 2,500,776
Left 4 Dead 2 673,940

So based on this web site, there are more than 1 million public Steam Community profiles with Modern Warfare 2 achievements registered.

Does this mean that there are multiple millions of people who own Modern Warfare 2 on PC?

Could this mean there are 7+ million Team Fortress 2 owners? 3-4 million Left 4 Dead 2 owners?



Even if this represented comprehensive numbers, not limited to public Steam Community profiles, I gotta say it's pretty impressive based on what people might expect for PC game sales.

What does GAF think?
 
D

dLMN8R

Member
The question is raised so often here, about how well games *actually* sell on Steam...I'm surprised that more people haven't replied to this!
 
Z

Zzoram

Member
All of the games in that list REQUIRE Steam activation, so those numbers actually include retail and Steam sales. This list would be more informative if it had games that have separate retail and Steam versions on it. Unfortunately, most games that don't require Steam do not have Steam Achievements. For example, Tropico 3 and Mass Effect 2 have achievements within the game, but they are not displayed in your Steam Community page.
 
S

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
Zzoram said:
All of the games in that list REQUIRE Steam activation, so those numbers actually include retail and Steam sales. This list would be more informative if it had games that have separate retail and Steam versions on it. Unfortunately, most games that don't require Steam do not have Steam Achievements. For example, Tropico 3 and Mass Effect 2 have achievements within the game, but they are not displayed in your Steam Community page.
Click to expand...

If only they would take that one extra day to tie them into Steam :(
 
D

dLMN8R

Member
Zzoram said:
All of the games in that list REQUIRE Steam activation, so those numbers actually include retail and Steam sales. This list would be more informative if it had games that have separate retail and Steam versions on it. Unfortunately, most games that don't require Steam do not have Steam Achievements. For example, Tropico 3 and Mass Effect 2 have achievements within the game, but they are not displayed in your Steam Community page.
Click to expand...
What? I'm just saying that for games which do require Steam activation - in other words, games with Steam Achievements - we now have a decent look into sales numbers.

I mean, this alludes to potential millions of sales of Modern Warfare 2 on PC. Even bigger numbers for other games.


Far, far higher than I would have ever imagined.
 
Z

Zzoram

Member
dLMN8R said:
What? I'm just saying that for games which do require Steam activation - in other words, games with Steam Achievements - we now have a decent look into sales numbers.

I mean, this alludes to potential millions of sales of Modern Warfare 2 on PC. Even bigger numbers for other games.


Far, far higher than I would have ever imagined.
Click to expand...

Actually, I don't think you can assume that there are many people playing without a Steam Community page. I'm pretty sure anyone actively using Steam has a Community page. The accounts not using it may be old ones with nothing but Half-Life 2 or Counterstrike connected to them and may not even be used anymore.
 
V

vazel

Banned
How do you not have a steam community page. I don't ever remember activating it. I didn't even know you could set it to private.
 
R

RJT

Member
Zzoram said:
All of the games in that list REQUIRE Steam activation, so those numbers actually include retail and Steam sales.
Click to expand...
So, MW2 PC probably sold 2-3 Million copies on retail and digitally on a dead platform. I think this is pretty interesting...
 
G

gregor7777

Banned
Zzoram said:
Actually, I don't think you can assume that there are many people playing without a Steam Community page. I'm pretty sure anyone actively using Steam has a Community page. The accounts not using it may be old ones with nothing but Half-Life 2 or Counterstrike connected to them and may not even be used anymore.
Click to expand...

Not true at all, IMO. My brother doesn't know anything about Steam community, doesn't have a page setup, yet I've gifted him several games and he's purchased a couple.

I'd probably consider him an average user.
 
D

dLMN8R

Member
Zzoram said:
Actually, I don't think you can assume that there are many people playing without a Steam Community page. I'm pretty sure anyone actively using Steam has a Community page. The accounts not using it may be old ones with nothing but Half-Life 2 or Counterstrike connected to them and may not even be used anymore.
Click to expand...
Naw, I've experienced this before - if you've never actively gone to your Steam profile site, then your profile is unavailable and set to private, so no others can get to it.

But I see what you were saying before - differentiating between games actually sold on Steam and games sold through retail and activated on Steam.


I'm more excited about the prospect of understanding exactly how well PC games as a whole sell, since we don't have reliable NPD numbers to back them up, than actually understanding how well games specifically on Steam sell.
 
R

RJT

Member
Zzoram said:
Actually, I don't think you can assume that there are many people playing without a Steam Community page. I'm pretty sure anyone actively using Steam has a Community page. The accounts not using it may be old ones with nothing but Half-Life 2 or Counterstrike connected to them and may not even be used anymore.
Click to expand...
Valve said 25 Million active accounts, so I would expect people that don't use Steam anymore aren't counted. You could be right, though...
 
G

Gravijah

Member
RJT said:
Valve said 25 Million active accounts, so I would expect people that don't use Steam anymore aren't counted. You could be right, though...
Click to expand...

I always take active to mean "we haven't banned this person, this account is disabled, etc"
 
S

Sanjay

Member
vazel said:
How do you not have a steam community page. I don't ever remember activating it. I didn't even know you could set it to private.
Click to expand...

Only Nabs keep their profile private.
 
R

RJT

Member
Other interesting numbers:
Audiosurf 259,245
Killing Floor 249,177
Torchlight 168,747
World of Goo 115,013
Braid 104,550
Plants vs. Zombies 95,249
Defense Grid 75,344

I think none of these games require Steam activation, so the numbers refer to Steam sales.
 
D

Dennis

Banned
I don't think it would be at all surprising for Modern Warfare 2 to sell more than a million on PC. Outside of the US, PC shooters are still huge.

The PC is doing a lot better than games journalists and US gaffers think.
 
V

vazel

Banned
vazel said:
How do you not have a steam community page. I don't ever remember activating it. I didn't even know you could set it to private.
Click to expand...
Looks like I was wrong you do have to activate it.

160wvnm.jpg
 
G

gregor7777

Banned
RJT said:
Other interesting numbers:
Audiosurf 259,245
Killing Floor 249,177
Torchlight 168,747
World of Goo 115,013
Braid 104,550
Plants vs. Zombies 95,249
Defense Grid 75,344

I think none of these games require Steam activation, so the numbers refer to Steam sales.
Click to expand...

IIRC, Tripwire has stated that Killing Floor sold over 400k before the holiday sales.
 
R

RJT

Member
LovingSteam said:
Remember, many have bought games and haven't played them yet.
Click to expand...
I think those count anyway. For instance, 33% of the Torchlight owners never entered the mine. That would be the people that never played the game, I would guess.
 
I

I NEED SCISSORS

Banned
DennisK4 said:
I don't think it would be at all surprising for Modern Warfare 2 to sell more than a million on PC. Outside of the US, PC shooters are still huge.

The PC is doing a lot better than games journalists and US gaffers think.
Click to expand...

The thing is, people seem to think that if a game 'only' sells 1-2 million, it's a gigantic flop. If this was the case, many a console exclusive would also be a flop by definition - yet, somehow to these people they aren't. It's some sort of crazy double standard people have... 1 million is never a flop, not unless you have an astronomical Shenmue budget and crazy sales expectations.

And especially not on PC where there are no licensing fees to take a bite out of the profits. Many PC versions of multiplats are also released at further reduced costs, just because they happened to have the code on hand anyway (see: Capcom MT Framework games). Stick it on digital services too, and it's practically free money for them. The point is, they have a higher profit margin so high sales don't matter as much.

I find this list interesting. I never even knew that STALKER, a hardcore adventure FPS sold 2 million copies. The more you know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_games
 
D

Dennis

Banned
You bring up a very good point I NEED SCISSORS: that many PC games don't have to sell a million copies for them to be profitable.
 
M

MikeE21286

Member
dLMN8R said:
I just stumbled upon this web site: http://dev.zr40.nl/steam/

The guy who created it made an algorithm that systematically scans every single public Steam Community profile for achievement stats. It takes approximately one month for the system to cover all accounts, based on the stats it shows for the number it covers per day.

Further interesting because Valve just revealed that there are 25 million active accounts, yet only 10 million with Steam Community profiles. This is further reduced when you consider that not every one of the 10 million Steam Community profiles are public.

So, of the 25 million accounts, how many have public Community profiles? 5 million? 9 million?


Either way, look at some of the numbers here: http://dev.zr40.nl/steam/games

Again, the numbers shown only cover public Steam Community profiles, and only 10 million of the 25 million active Steam users have Steam Community accounts to begin with (public or private)

Team Fortress 2 1,740,658
Half-Life 2: Episode Two 1,255,624
Portal Portal 1,247,849
Left 4 Dead 1,216,644
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 1,023,973
Day of Defeat: Source Day of Defeat: Source 2,500,776
Left 4 Dead 2 673,940

So based on this web site, there are more than 1 million public Steam Community profiles with Modern Warfare 2 achievements registered.

Does this mean that there are multiple millions of people who own Modern Warfare 2 on PC?

Could this mean there are 7+ million Team Fortress 2 owners? 3-4 million Left 4 Dead 2 owners?



Even if this represented comprehensive numbers, not limited to public Steam Community profiles, I gotta say it's pretty impressive based on what people might expect for PC game sales.

What does GAF think?
Click to expand...

I think it would not be so bad to surmise that, based upon these numbers, about 2-3 million steam copies of MW2 were sold.
 
H

HiddenWings

Member
RJT said:
I think those count anyway. For instance, 33% of the Torchlight owners never entered the mine. That would be the people that never played the game, I would guess.
Click to expand...
Don't forget, Torchlight didn't launch with achievements. I'm among those 33%, but I've played a lot of the game already. Just not since achievements were added.
 
C

Capndrake

Member
I'm pretty sure only people who have added their account to that site make up the percentages. Also don't look at the guy ranked 15 on the top players list.

:(
 
S

speedpop

Has problems recognising girls
Capndrake said:
I'm pretty sure only people who have added their account to that site make up the percentages. Also don't look at the guy ranked 15 on the top players list.

:(
Click to expand...
Holy shit, you god damn nerd!


I'm rank 104,153!? How could this be!? I am an anti-achievement man!!
 
D

Dynoro

Member
Thanks dLMN8R for looking into this and pulling some numbers - makes for some interesting reading. I did not think sales would be that high on Steam alone
 
F

fallout

Member
Capndrake said:
I'm pretty sure only people who have added their account to that site make up the percentages. Also don't look at the guy ranked 15 on the top players list.

:(
Click to expand...
It's okay. We know you're hacking.
 
A

Archie

Second-rate Anihawk
speedpop said:
Holy shit, you god damn nerd!


I'm rank 104,153!? How could this be!? I am an anti-achievement man!!
Click to expand...
My achievements are so sparse that I'm unranked which is ironic because I have like 20k nerd points on the 360. :lol
 
Z

zombieshavebrains

I have not used cocaine
Capndrake said:
I'm pretty sure only people who have added their account to that site make up the percentages. Also don't look at the guy ranked 15 on the top players list.

:(
Click to expand...

Almost 1800 hours in TF2?

Also, does that mean L4d2 sold half as well as L4d?
 
M

Mahzkrieg

Banned
Zzoram said:
Actually, I don't think you can assume that there are many people playing without a Steam Community page. I'm pretty sure anyone actively using Steam has a Community page. The accounts not using it may be old ones with nothing but Half-Life 2 or Counterstrike connected to them and may not even be used anymore.
Click to expand...

This isn't true.

It baffled me at first because I can't remember ever getting to NOT create one, but I always check out the STEAM IDs of everyone I'm sitting in a lobby with (L4D2, for example) to see how many hours played they have and a large number of people simply haven't set up a profile yet.
 
A

ArjanN

Member
DennisK4 said:
I don't think it would be at all surprising for Modern Warfare 2 to sell more than a million on PC. Outside of the US, PC shooters are still huge.

The PC is doing a lot better than games journalists and US gaffers think.
Click to expand...

Modern Warfare 2 sold like 17 million copies, I'm sure the PC version sold a couple of million at least.

kamspy said:
my god some of the 'time spent playing' logs on that account are crazy.

34 hours for Madballs? Really?

800 hours in Garry's Mod? Does this guy have his own game?
Click to expand...

Madballs also has multiplayer which I hear is decent, so 34 hours isn't really all that much.
 
D

dLMN8R

Member
Dynoro said:
Thanks dLMN8R for looking into this and pulling some numbers - makes for some interesting reading. I did not think sales would be that high on Steam alone
Click to expand...
Hey, thank someone on another forum for pointing me to this site.

Also keep in mind that, as someone else in this thread pointed out, these numbers don't always account for Steam sales alone. For games like Modern Warfare 2, which use Steamworks, meaning that every copy sold at retail also activates on Steam, those copies are counted too.
 
G

Gozan

Member
kamspy said:
800 hours in Garry's Mod? Does this guy have his own game?
Click to expand...


Maybe he used to pause the game overnight? That's certainly how I got a time counter of 999:59 on Twilight Princess.
 
R

RJT

Member
ArjanN said:
Modern Warfare 2 sold like 17 million copies, I'm sure the PC version sold a couple of million at least.
Click to expand...
Except there were news about abysmal PC sales of MW2. IIRC, MW2 sold in its first month 4 Million on Xbox360, 1 Million on PS3, and 170k on PC (NPD numbers).
 
B

bernardobri

Steve, the dog with no powers that we let hang out with us all for some reason
Capndrake said:
I'm pretty sure only people who have added their account to that site make up the percentages. Also don't look at the guy ranked 15 on the top players list.

:(
Click to expand...


.... Damn.
 
Z

Zzoram

Member
RJT said:
Except there were news about abysmal PC sales of MW2. IIRC, MW2 sold in its first month 4 Million on Xbox360, 1 Million on PS3, and 170k on PC (NPD numbers).
Click to expand...

If it only sold 170K on PC in November, and it's at a minimum of 1.1million now (all versions require Steam activation, 1.02million Steam Community pages have achievements, not all Steam accounts have Community pages activated) then either it sold more at retail in December, or overseas sales + Steam sales made up more than half of MW2 PC sales. I wonder if Steam managed to sell 1/3 of the MW2 copies.
 
S

SlipperySlope

Banned
Zzoram said:
Actually, I don't think you can assume that there are many people playing without a Steam Community page. I'm pretty sure anyone actively using Steam has a Community page. The accounts not using it may be old ones with nothing but Half-Life 2 or Counterstrike connected to them and may not even be used anymore.
Click to expand...

I buy games off of Steam (just bought Tropico 3, but haven't bought MW 2, but I did buy Crysis off of it, I also bought Arkham Asylum off it), and I didn't even know you could have a Steam Community Page.

Edit: This is the first time I've noticed there's a "Community" tab in Steam at all. What do you do with it?
 
Z

Zzoram

Member
SlipperySlope said:
I buy games off of Steam (just bought Tropico 3, but haven't bought MW 2, but I did buy Crysis off of it, I also bought Arkham Asylum off it), and I didn't even know you could have a Steam Community Page.
Click to expand...

Activate it! It's awesome. It lets you know your total playtime for your Steam games, view Steam Achievement statistics, and the 6 most played games in the last 2 weeks by your friend's list. It also lets you pick a display picture that shows up in all Valve multiplayer games beside your name. You can also join Groups, and NeoGAF has a group with over 2000 members.

It's really easy to set up, and once you do, it autologs you in every time you start Steam. I've encouraged all my friends to set up their pages.
 
T

TouchMyBox

Member
While these numbers are a decent indicator, it's really hard to give a good estimate. If only half of the steam users out there have a profile, and only 75%-80% of those are public, doubling the number isn't a safe guess since people who are engaged in the steam community will obviously purchase more games than people who do not have profiles set-up. I'd imagine that the bulk of people without community pages have less than five transactions/activations.

RJT said:
Except there were news about abysmal PC sales of MW2. IIRC, MW2 sold in its first month 4 Million on Xbox360, 1 Million on PS3, and 170k on PC (NPD numbers).
Click to expand...

lol. I thought everyone agreed NPD was useless to measure PC games?
 
bee

bee

Member
RJT said:
Except there were news about abysmal PC sales of MW2. IIRC, MW2 sold in its first month 4 Million on Xbox360, 1 Million on PS3, and 170k on PC (NPD numbers).
Click to expand...

eh? the US pc market is small compared to europe, NPD means nothing

infinity ward said:
The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 has actually outsold the PC version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in it's first week. Making it the most successful PC version.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

UK sales October 2023 - PS5#1 (-4%) XBS#2 (-33%) NSW#3 (+15%) | EA FC 24#1 Spider-Man#2 AC Mirage#3
Sales-Age 2
74
6K
demigod replied
UK games sales dropped 6% in 2022 and console sales plunged 29% | NSW #1, PS #2, Xbox #3 & Fifa #1, COD #2, Lego SW #3
2
56
4K
Rhazer Fusion replied
Call of Duty:: Modern Warfare 2, Nintendo Switch and God of War Ragnarok dominate November | UK Monthly Charts (sales down yoy)
Sales-Age
3
1K
Kagey K replied
Pokémon and God of War can’t prevent November sales slump | European Monthly Charts
Sales-Age
9
1K
yazenov replied
UK Monthly Charts | PS5 #1 Hardware, 65% of Resident Evil 4 sales were on PlayStation, 20% on Xbox and 15% on PC (Digital+Physical)
3 4 5 6 7
300
20K
ergem replied
Top Bottom