Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

Someone from the developer/publisher team has replied to several negative reviews during the last few days. They are not only looking, but interacting.

ThERat said:

I do understand that and I am convinced they do look at player numbers. It's not as if looking those numbers takes ages and is such a difficult task to do. If they don't look at them, their overlords will, I am sure, cos these ppl are obsessed with KPIs and numbers. I know from my own experience It doesnt matter if those numbers make sense or not, but management loves to use numbers.

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So what you're saying is that even if Firaxis don't look at player numbers, somebody else does.

Okay. Was anybody saying that nobody paid attention to player numbers?

I agree that publishers are often obssessed with these kinds of things as a KPI. Do you think they should be? Do you think it's a good metric for publishers to rely on, regardless of the game?

We can debate the level to which VII needs to exceede V and VI all day long. It's not really going to get us anywhere, because people who don't like VII are always going to insist on a higher number, or insist that VII should've gotten there faster (if and when it eventually stabilises at a "decent" number. I saw this exact same progression of critical arguments around AoE IV, which is now a solidly successful RTS in its own right). It's easy to predict the outcome if the discussion revolves around "VII good or bad". We all know where we all sit.

So I figure it'd be more interesting to ask you if you think overlords obsessing over player counts in a game which is primarily single player is a good long-term metric for the game's health?

IntelligentDisk said:

Civ V = Steam
Civ VII = Steam, Epic Games Store, PS4, PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, iOS

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I think this might be the most overlooked data in this thread. I'm aware that this forum is be packed with old time Civ gamers that still uses PC (including me). But we might understimate the size of the console market and its impact on Civ 7 sales and reception. Recent data shows that PC + Consoles comprise around 45 % of the total games market and consoles already surpassed PC in terms of market size and growth. Just wanted to highlight that all these metrics regarding Steam (reviews, users) might just not provide full picture (or even totally mislead).


Source:

shazzam said:

Irc civ5 had a mac release as well, which might actually rival the numbers of people who bought civ 7 on the Xbox one... (Negligible)

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The port for civ 5 has stopped working years ago. They can‘t make a difference with regards to player numbers.

Civ VI used to be very popular on iPad and Switch though, and these numbers are missing from civ VI‘s picture.

shazzam said:

Irc civ5 had a mac release as well, which might actually rival the numbers of people who bought civ 7 on the Xbox one... (Negligible)

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"Mac release” is not equivalent to “Apple AppStore” - IIRC the port of Civ 5 was primarily available through… Steam !
As a Mac user I mostly ever used Steam for gaming since the end of CD-roms, including civ 5-6-7.

They'll be looking at player metrics but they won't be looking at SteamDB. They'll surely have their own in-house data about unique users per day/week/month/period, average hours played by user per day/week/month/period, total hours played, new or returning users per day/week/month/period etc. I'd imagine the concurrent player numbers we see on SteamDB must surely somewhat reflect that data which we don't have, but they won't tell the whole story.

Pangaian Citizen said:

"Mac release” is not equivalent to “Apple AppStore” - IIRC the port of Civ 5 was primarily available through… Steam !
As a Mac user I mostly ever used Steam for gaming since the end of CD-roms, including civ 5-6-7.

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Actually there was a Mac store version of civ 5, but long since dead, I was more making a tongue in cheek comparison to the numbers of people who are using the base Xbox one to play civ 7 (not discounting other consoles as being relevant to the player counts)

ThERat said:

I do understand that and I am convinced they do look at player numbers. It's not as if looking those numbers takes ages and is such a difficult task to do. If they don't look at them, their overlords will, I am sure, cos these ppl are obsessed with KPIs and numbers. I know from my own experience It doesnt matter if those numbers make sense or not, but management loves to use numbers.

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This was discussed many times. This metric was designed specifically for multiplayer-only games, it's useless for games which primarily single-player, that was confirmed by executives of game developed companies. The only reason why we look at this metric is because we don't have anything else. And the other way around - the main reason why Steam shows this metric for free is because it's mostly useless for commercial goals.

Firaxis clearly have much better metrics to look at.

So we're currently dropping concurrent players at a rate of about 600 a day since Tuesday. Suspecting that trend will break and we get a lower drop on Friday and it will be really interesting to see whether the weekend numbers can get close to last weekends or continue to drop, but it is unusual for it to drop during the week on this scale day to day

Verified_Confection_Being said:

So we're currently dropping concurrent players at a rate of about 600 a day since Tuesday. Suspecting that trend will break and we get a lower drop on Friday and it will be really interesting to see whether the weekend numbers can get close to last weekends or continue to drop, but it is unusual for it to drop during the week on this scale day to day

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Business as usual when I checked for yesterday.

% drops from launch day to 9th day from updates:

1.4: 7.9% decrease
1.3.2: 3.9% increase
1.3.1: 9.6% decrease
1.3: 10.9% decrease
1.2.5: 1.1% decrease
1.2.4: 2.2% decrease
1.2.3: 5.7% decrease
1.2.2: 14.7% decrease
1.2.1: 6.1% decrease
1.2: 15.1% decrease

I think the biggest problem with Civ7 isn't even the player count, but the large number of negative reviews the game continues to receive, even after ToT. The game is undoubtedly better now, and ToT addresses some of the biggest complaints people had about it, yet the percentage of negative reviews is still close to 50%.

Xandinho said:

I think the biggest problem with Civ7 isn't even the player count, but the large number of negative reviews the game continues to receive, even after ToT. The game is undoubtedly better now, and ToT addresses some of the biggest complaints people had about it, yet the percentage of negative reviews is still close to 50%.

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177 negative over the last 7 full days is still a lot. Clearly lots of players still have issues with the game, even after this patch.
However 475 positive reviews over the same period. But the overall number of reviews per day is dropping. I suspect we will see less positive reviews as we go onto whatever happens next.

Initial reaction after ToT went live gave some hope that Civ 7 would at least equal Civ 5 in terms of player count in the upcoming weeks or even months. But the drop in the recent days show that it will still stay behind, but maybe not well behind as previously.

Unfortunately, commentaries to negative reviews show that Civ 7 is still missing lots of features which Civ 5-6 players have been used to. I guess it will change over time with future DLC, patches and expansions. But needs patience.

Lebo44 said:

Unfortunately, commentaries to negative reviews show that Civ 7 is still missing lots of features which Civ 5-6 players have been used to. I guess it will change over time with future DLC, patches and expansions. But needs patience.

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A major problem I believe is that many people didn’t get to playing 5 and/or 6 until these were complete (and sold at big discount), so they don’t even know what their respective vanilla versions were like…
Take religion for instance : unless I remember uncorrectly, that wasn’t even a thing in 5 before G&K !

Pangaian Citizen said:

A major problem I believe is that many people didn’t get to playing 5 and/or 6 until these were complete (and sold at big discount), so they don’t even know what their respective vanilla versions were like…
Take religion for instance : unless I remember uncorrectly, that wasn’t even a thing in 5 before G&K !

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Well Religion in Civ 7 is a complete joke mate.
You have to constantly spam missionaries just to stop your tows and cities being converted throughout the whole of the exploration era.
Then when you get to the modern era, religion is just forgot about.

Smegger213 said:

Well Religion in Civ 7 is a complete joke mate.
You have to constantly spam missionaries just to stop your tows and cities being converted throughout the whole of the exploration era.
Then when you get to the modern era, religion is just forgot about.

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Fair, I mean missionary spam wasn't a thing at all before civ 7.

Smegger213 said:

Well Religion in Civ 7 is a complete joke mate.
You have to constantly spam missionaries just to stop your tows and cities being converted throughout the whole of the exploration era.
Then when you get to the modern era, religion is just forgot about.

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I won’t deny it, but that’s my point : civ has become such a complex game that you can’t expect all of its systems and mechanics to be deep and fully fledged on the vanilla release, knowing that the traditional development cycle since at least civ 3 is one first release then two expansions. The fact that we actually have an embryo (at least) of religion, diplomacy, natural disasters, ideologies, minor civs (IPs), or espionage in the vanilla version of civ 7 is already much, compared to the prior iterations of the game - many of these were not in vanilla civ 5 I reckon.

Xandinho said:

I think the biggest problem with Civ7 isn't even the player count, but the large number of negative reviews the game continues to receive, even after ToT. The game is undoubtedly better now, and ToT addresses some of the biggest complaints people had about it, yet the percentage of negative reviews is still close to 50%.

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This. We can debate back and forth on whether 20k was a good or subpar peak for this update (or even if 10k is a solid floor) but the 56% positive reviews for Civ 7 post Test of Time update absolutely is disappointing and cannot be what Firaxis hoped or expected with this free release.