Peaked at only 24.5K Players

[Morgan]

I've just checked Steam charts and it look like TLOU has peaked at just 24,521 simultaneous players. To put that into perspective God of War peaked at 73,529. I wonder if this will make them think twice about pushing an unfinished game out the door in the future.

[Kunovega]

KingGorillaKong eredeti hozzászólása:

The thing about SteamDB and SteamCharts is they only show you concurrent, but tell you nothing about unique players per day/per week.
You could have 10,000 concurrent players peaking each day, but you could have a total of 75,000 unique players per day. Albeit, this is a stark contrast I'm using as an example. A situation like that just means the game is very popular but people are playing it in shorter windows.

You could a game have 30,000 peak players for each day as well, but there could only be 30-40,000 unique players.

What game is more popular then based on those player counts? 30k? Nope, cause it has less unique active players.

So even these player counts from SteamDB and SteamChart don't tell an entirely accurate picture.

Right, but that's a limitation that plays out across all games, so the relative comparison is still situationally valid. You don't compare an sp to an mp game as those have different thresholds for reasons to return to playing them again, but it's still valid to compare an mp to an mp or an sp to an sp and see how many concurrent they attract relative to each other.

You use other metrics like number of reviews for the same reason, sure it's not an accurate statistic to show number of owners, but the relative likelihood of someone leaving a review averages out such that a game with more reviews can be assumed to have more players who bought it and so on.

It's all relative, especially when the variables against them are similar.

[Trevor Reznik]

Every Sony game is flopping (Returnals, Sackboy) and I couldn't be happier.

Hope they P155 off with these shady ports.

[kgkong]

Kunovega eredeti hozzászólása:

KingGorillaKong eredeti hozzászólása:

The thing about SteamDB and SteamCharts is they only show you concurrent, but tell you nothing about unique players per day/per week.
You could have 10,000 concurrent players peaking each day, but you could have a total of 75,000 unique players per day. Albeit, this is a stark contrast I'm using as an example. A situation like that just means the game is very popular but people are playing it in shorter windows.

You could a game have 30,000 peak players for each day as well, but there could only be 30-40,000 unique players.

What game is more popular then based on those player counts? 30k? Nope, cause it has less unique active players.

So even these player counts from SteamDB and SteamChart don't tell an entirely accurate picture.

Right, but that's a limitation that plays out across all games, so the relative comparison is still situationally valid. You don't compare an sp to an mp game as those have different thresholds for reasons to return to playing them again, but it's still valid to compare an mp to an mp or an sp to an sp and see how many concurrent they attract relative to each other.

You use other metrics like number of reviews for the same reason, sure it's not an accurate statistic to show number of owners, but the relative likelihood of someone leaving a review averages out such that a game with more reviews can be assumed to have more players who bought it and so on.

It's all relative, especially when the variables against them are similar.

Ish sort of.
The peak metrics are otherwise entirely useless though without having anything to compare the peak player count towards. And even if you took "total copies sold" at the time you're viewing peak players, or concurrent players, these values don't particularly paint any useful or meaningful story about what's going on. As you can pick any game, and you will find roughly the same trending graph from launch date to 1 month in.

Add in that it ONLY provides you information as well for Steam and neglects all other platforms (Epic, PS, etc). So even if we had total copies sold numbers (which more or less can be found), comparing any reported metric to total copies sold creates falsified statistics. It's falsified statistics because you have X copies sold across multiple platforms but only Y concurrent and Z peak player numbers from one platform. Immediately the math done here to make any sense of the metrics assumes no one else is playing on other platforms.

500 million copies sold for example, and Steam (DB or charts) says 10k concurrent players each day and a peak player count of 80k but hasn't seen that in 1 month, then you're looking at 2% of the player base is concurrently playing. And you know the game is on other platforms but those platforms don't release metrics so SteamDB and SteamCharts provides very misleading data. It makes games sound far less successful than they are and every hater takes advantage of this because they don't have to cherry pick any data to ignore, they can use everything provided by SteamDB and SteamChart to argue their point as some absolute truth because basically those sources make it easy and do nothing to provide a disclaimer that these metrics cannot be used for any accurate representation of a game. Only can tell you how active the game is currently and what the activity trend is like. Which implies a level of popularity but is no means a direct representation of popular. 10k concurrent gamers for one game could be a lot while 100k for another is low (niche game for example versus a world famous MMORPG).

[Morgan]

Kunovega eredeti hozzászólása:

Morgan eredeti hozzászólása:

"They actually tracked identical for the days they tracked,"

This sentence doesn't make sense in English. Examination of the data shows unique hourly reporting. I think you're trying to say that it has identical data for multiple days. However, it doesn't.

I think you clearly don't understand what you're looking at. Steam charts:

1. Skips days, doesn't track as early as steamdb
2. Gives you only hourly summary data compared to steamdb is giving you a more granular tracking with minutes broken down

Once you factor these two anomaly you might have a better understanding of what I said.

Both are showing the same numbers for the days steam charts has visible, but it's being summarized out of the larger context, as I said steamdb is the more accurate visualization of the same data sets for the days shown, and includes days not even present in the steam charts display.

You're arguing over something you don't understand.

You're claiming that I don't understand yet you've provided nothing to back up your assertions, or even given any actual explanation. And most of the assertions you're making have no effect on the accuracy of peak user numbers.

Which days have been skipped?

How does reporting an an hourly summary make peak users inaccurate? (it doesn't BTW)

I thin what you mean is, Steam charts, doesn't report until midnight of the first day (no days missing) so the peak may have happened in the first hours of release. Though if that's the case that's also pretty damning as it shows a notable number of people gave up in the first few hours.

[Morgan]

KingGorillaKong eredeti hozzászólása:

The thing about SteamDB and SteamCharts is they only show you concurrent, but tell you nothing about unique players per day/per week.
You could have 10,000 concurrent players peaking each day, but you could have a total of 75,000 unique players per day. Albeit, this is a stark contrast I'm using as an example. A situation like that just means the game is very popular but people are playing it in shorter windows.

You could have a game have 30,000 peak players for each day as well, but there could only be 30-40,000 unique players.

What game is more popular then based on those player counts? 30k? Nope, cause it has less unique active players.

So even these player counts from SteamDB and SteamChart don't tell an entirely accurate picture.

But it still shows a trend, especially when comparing similar games. You'd expect GoW RE4 and TLOU to all be played in similar ways, so the comparison is still very telling.

[kgkong]

Morgan eredeti hozzászólása:

KingGorillaKong eredeti hozzászólása:

The thing about SteamDB and SteamCharts is they only show you concurrent, but tell you nothing about unique players per day/per week.
You could have 10,000 concurrent players peaking each day, but you could have a total of 75,000 unique players per day. Albeit, this is a stark contrast I'm using as an example. A situation like that just means the game is very popular but people are playing it in shorter windows.

You could have a game have 30,000 peak players for each day as well, but there could only be 30-40,000 unique players.

What game is more popular then based on those player counts? 30k? Nope, cause it has less unique active players.

So even these player counts from SteamDB and SteamChart don't tell an entirely accurate picture.

But it still shows a trend, especially when comparing similar games. You'd expect GoW RE4 and TLOU to all be played in similar ways, so the comparison is still very telling.

It shows the same rough trend of every other game.
Large player base in the first few days or so, then trails off.

The falloff is heavier when a game has a buggier release and will show jumps back in player count as each successive update releases.

However, we're so new into the game's lifespan that we cannot observe these types of trends yet.

[Morgan]

KingGorillaKong eredeti hozzászólása:

Morgan eredeti hozzászólása:

But it still shows a trend, especially when comparing similar games. You'd expect GoW RE4 and TLOU to all be played in similar ways, so the comparison is still very telling.

It shows the same rough trend of every other game.
Large player base in the first few days or so, then trails off.

The falloff is heavier when a game has a buggier release and will show jumps back in player count as each successive update releases.

However, we're so new into the game's lifespan that we cannot observe these types of trends yet.

With single player games, even buggy one, you will tend to see the most players in the first week. Even when patches do bring players back it unusual to see more players than in ht first week, and very rare to see notably more. We aren't going to be seeing this jump up to suddenly be even close to rivalling other big name PS ports or the RE4 remake. Which is the basic point of the thread.

[kgkong]

Morgan eredeti hozzászólása:

KingGorillaKong eredeti hozzászólása:

It shows the same rough trend of every other game.
Large player base in the first few days or so, then trails off.

The falloff is heavier when a game has a buggier release and will show jumps back in player count as each successive update releases.

However, we're so new into the game's lifespan that we cannot observe these types of trends yet.

With single player games, even buggy one, you will tend to see the most players in the first week. Even when patches do bring players back it unusual to see more players than in ht first week, and very rare to see notably more. We aren't going to be seeing this jump up to suddenly be even close to rivalling other big name PS ports or the RE4 remake. Which is the basic point of the thread.

We don't know that though. TLOU has a reasonable following, whether you're from the PS or not. There's a lot of interest in the game. And yes, we do know for a fact that the player count is stunted due to the buggy release.
Now I did say it's too early to even observe any kind of real trend, however if you look close enough at the SteamChart values, there's already an uptick since the Tuesday hotfix and nVidia driver hotfix. Normally when a fix improves a game as much as these two patches did, you see a much larger few day jump in player count if the game isn't actually as good those players immediately flee, not just a gradual slow climb back. But I wouldn't necessarily call this observation anything you can use to project or predict future trendings. But it does imply that (based on the community commentary) that player count will suddenly jump once the stability and lower end optimizations are patched in. Implications don't always translate to the same behavioural trends though, but do make good markers for predictions, but don't make these predictions technically accurate.

[Morgan]

KingGorillaKong eredeti hozzászólása:

Morgan eredeti hozzászólása:

With single player games, even buggy one, you will tend to see the most players in the first week. Even when patches do bring players back it unusual to see more players than in ht first week, and very rare to see notably more. We aren't going to be seeing this jump up to suddenly be even close to rivalling other big name PS ports or the RE4 remake. Which is the basic point of the thread.

We don't know that though. TLOU has a reasonable following, whether you're from the PS or not. There's a lot of interest in the game. And yes, we do know for a fact that the player count is stunted due to the buggy release.
Now I did say it's too early to even observe any kind of real trend, however if you look close enough at the SteamChart values, there's already an uptick since the Tuesday hotfix and nVidia driver hotfix. Normally when a fix improves a game as much as these two patches did, you see a much larger few day jump in player count if the game isn't actually as good those players immediately flee, not just a gradual slow climb back. But I wouldn't necessarily call this observation anything you can use to project or predict future trendings. But it does imply that (based on the community commentary) that player count will suddenly jump once the stability and lower end optimizations are patched in. Implications don't always translate to the same behavioural trends though, but do make good markers for predictions, but don't make these predictions technically accurate.

Which games have ever ever seen such a massive uptake after initial release? I can only think of No Mans Sky and that achieved it by adding a hell of a lot of new content.

[kgkong]

Morgan eredeti hozzászólása:

KingGorillaKong eredeti hozzászólása:

We don't know that though. TLOU has a reasonable following, whether you're from the PS or not. There's a lot of interest in the game. And yes, we do know for a fact that the player count is stunted due to the buggy release.
Now I did say it's too early to even observe any kind of real trend, however if you look close enough at the SteamChart values, there's already an uptick since the Tuesday hotfix and nVidia driver hotfix. Normally when a fix improves a game as much as these two patches did, you see a much larger few day jump in player count if the game isn't actually as good those players immediately flee, not just a gradual slow climb back. But I wouldn't necessarily call this observation anything you can use to project or predict future trendings. But it does imply that (based on the community commentary) that player count will suddenly jump once the stability and lower end optimizations are patched in. Implications don't always translate to the same behavioural trends though, but do make good markers for predictions, but don't make these predictions technically accurate.

Which games have ever ever seen such a massive uptake after initial release? I can only think of No Mans Sky and that achieved it by adding a hell of a lot of new content.

Victoria 3 is the freshest example I have.
500m+ copies sold. On Steam it has abysmal player numbers. The game isn't dead nor unpopular. It's just niche and launched with issues. The game launched as a full release in what is unianimously considered an Early Access state. Not nearly as brutal of a situation as No Man's Sky. But it's basically a smaller scale of that. Due to being a more niche game from other PDX titles, and some over hyping from the community itself, a lot of people bought the game and realized a more socio-economic approach to the game wasn't their cup of tea. Player count dropped ridiculously fast. And then the 1.1 patch introduced a small uptick followed by 1.2 generating a larger uptick. And 1.3 patch is on its way soon and based on the dev diaries and communications from the studio, it looks like the game itself is now on an upward trend.
We're about 5 months in to for this game. There's also the whole issue that this game is a CPU beast, and a lot of users don't understand the demands that AVX and parallel processing actually puts on CPUs so there's a lot of people claiming the game is technically broken but they're running on gen 1 or gen 2 AVX CPUs and getting into late game and going "why is game so slow and laggy" and if you actually look at their debug, the game isn't slow or lagging. The calculations have reduced how fast they go because the CPU is physically incapable of processing so many parallel tasks at once, with so many different variables with such high value counts. The math in this game cripples CPUs because everybody still thinks "more CPU clock = better" when we're entering a state where CPU clock doesn't matter nearly as much now and more cores (or in newest games with heavy game assets, more CPU cache).

So once more users even upgrade their systems from 10+ year old CPUs, we'll see an even larger up tick in the players on Vic 3. I can say the same about a small demographic of people who wanna play TLOU as well who have 10+ year old systems. Once they actually upgrade, they will see a large number of new players (assuming they upgrade before the end of Summer as interests by that point will change with new games coming out, the fall TV and streaming line ups etc).

[brian]

potato eredeti hozzászólása:

U_Go_6FT_BeLOW eredeti hozzászólása:

This game will peak when they provide a patch that allows everyone to actually play it on older hardware that meets or exceeds the min. Req.

games peak on release, not after

not necessarily true.
Valheim peaked around a month after release.
Dayz actually peaked this year.
ARMA 3 peaked 2 years after release.
I could go on for a very long time.

[kgkong]

Silver 1 eredeti hozzászólása:

potato eredeti hozzászólása:

games peak on release, not after

not necessarily true.
Valheim peaked around a month after release.
Dayz actually peaked this year.
ARMA 3 peaked 2 years after release.
I could go on for a very long time.

WoW also never peaked anywhere near release either. lol

[Morgan]

KingGorillaKong eredeti hozzászólása:

Morgan eredeti hozzászólása:

Which games have ever ever seen such a massive uptake after initial release? I can only think of No Mans Sky and that achieved it by adding a hell of a lot of new content.

Victoria 3 is the freshest example I have.

Victoria 3 peaked on release day, then numbers massiveness dropped off. It's an example of the typical behaviour I described.

[brian]

Morgan eredeti hozzászólása:

Nick930 eredeti hozzászólása:

Tell that to Fortnite.

Multiplayer games are different, especially when they ass new continent. Most single player games will peak in the first week of release.

football manager series
cities skylines
kenshi

[Morgan]

Silver 1 eredeti hozzászólása:

potato eredeti hozzászólása:

games peak on release, not after

not necessarily true.
Valheim peaked around a month after release.
Dayz actually peaked this year.
ARMA 3 peaked 2 years after release.
I could go on for a very long time.

Single player games tend to peak on release.