Why is this game so overlooked ?

[Buurt]

I started with grim dawn only this year, it has great mod support, great content, doing builds is fun, good story, controller support, full offline playable and 1000 other things that make it in my books one of the best arpgs that I know

No game as a service feeling and so on.

I was looking at steam charts and saw that peak player of all time was like 10k 5 years ago or something, so even less than most smallest indie games nowadays, since release it had like 2k players most of the time.

Last epoch and even wolcan and other games that are in my book "worse" had like 4 times the players in peak times.

So I was wondering because I now only joined this community, why was and is this game so overlooked ? Because when I compare it two everything after diablo 2 it's just better than 98% of them and still it seems like completely overlooked even when still getting content announced.

[Ozeko]

Grim Dawn is an old game but still holds a few thousand players. Compared to Wolcen that has 70 people playing it now. Wolcen had a lot of hype built up around it. Grim dawn sold 7 million units which includes the DLC.

[Doug Masters]

Yeah in my opinion its, the second or third best to D2R in my book. I want to like Last Epoch, like I think they are going in the right direction with the classes but everything else, it tries to be too.... "modern". I dunno its got potential but there is something holding it back as, kinda... I dunno what's the word, soulless? Maybe not that.

[SubTonic]

It's likely because it doesn't have a focus on multiplayer. No servers, all P2P. Most ARPG players play for the online component, be it trading, leaderboards, seasons, grouping. Grim Dawn is pretty much a solo experience with a very optional multiplayer.

That being said, I think it's been very successful despite being more niche. 76k reviews on Steam is nothing to sniff at.

[MedeaFleecestealer]

Also advertising/promotion was/is mostly word of mouth from players to other players. There have been some reviews on gaming sites and streamers over the years, but Crate didn't have the cash for a major push when the game launched, unlike Wolcen, D3/4, etc.

[FlamingX21]

There is something with it when u find a hidden gem in middle of scrappiles (of other junk games).

Nova days it's extremely hard to find a better and as cared as this one, & in reality I got spoiled.

Helldivers 2, Baldur's Gate 3 might be on same par and very known but there aren't many as u can tell from my view. They drive in madness of these macrotransactions now and previously named leaderboards.

I get that some games are nice that they are competitive but for most part they, imo, should be not a second job and respect your time and also be part of your leisure.

Sure, we could run multiple ad campaigns and make this game a even bigger bomb but I don't think it necessary. It makes guys like you, Buurt, feel a bit special, right? (in a good way I mean)

[Neit]

Having little or no marketing does that.

But honestly, there are some advantages to having a smaller community. There's way less trolls and other toxic people here. If you ask a question, people actually respond and try to help. When you open Guide section, there are actual guides instead of "How to Jump" spam. Sure, occasionally there are some low quality posts, or some loudmouths that are just waiting to cross the line to get banned, but in general community is nice and helpful. It's impossible to have that in popular games, at least unless you do some really heavy duty moderation. And when you actually have something reasonable to say, there's bigger chance someone will actually notice that.

[Zantai]

Looks like you doubled up on reddit, so I'll repost my response from there here as well for everyone else:

Grim Dawn was made by a scrappy team of ~9 people. We had no budget for significant advertising (much of it was word of mouth) and online servers (a must-have feature for many players) were a distant dream. The game was built upon an old engine and, visually, it was not what some would call "modern".

So we never got that giant spike when the game first released, but you have to keep in mind that our definition of success back then was to ship 200k copies. We're just a few million copies past that now!

Another thing about Grim Dawn, is that it has enjoyed an unprecedented tail on copies sold. Sure, it tapered off, but it's going remarkably strong even 8 years later. The pick up rate on expansions is also above average. These are some of the reasons why you have a third expansion on the way. :D

So metrics can be a bit misleading. :)

[Buurt]

Originally posted by Zantai:

Looks like you doubled up on reddit, so I'll repost my response from there here as well for everyone else:

Grim Dawn was made by a scrappy team of ~9 people. We had no budget for significant advertising (much of it was word of mouth) and online servers (a must-have feature for many players) were a distant dream. The game was built upon an old engine and, visually, it was not what some would call "modern".

So we never got that giant spike when the game first released, but you have to keep in mind that our definition of success back then was to ship 200k copies. We're just a few million copies past that now!

Another thing about Grim Dawn, is that it has enjoyed an unprecedented tail on copies sold. Sure, it tapered off, but it's going remarkably strong even 8 years later. The pick up rate on expansions is also above average. These are some of the reasons why you have a third expansion on the way. :D

So metrics can be a bit misleading. :)

Ya I sometimes do that because often Reddit and steam Forum have pretty different and "cool" answers and its interesting to see the difference between them

[Vagrant]

+2k players for an 8 years old ARPG is not bad at all to be honest.

[Lywelyn]

Originally posted by Vagrant:

+2k players for an 8 years old ARPG is not bad at all to be honest.

but also as zantai said

Originally posted by Zantai:

Looks like you doubled up on reddit, so I'll repost my response from there here as well for everyone else:

Grim Dawn was made by a scrappy team of ~9 people. We had no budget for significant advertising (much of it was word of mouth) and online servers (a must-have feature for many players) were a distant dream. The game was built upon an old engine and, visually, it was not what some would call "modern".

So we never got that giant spike when the game first released, but you have to keep in mind that our definition of success back then was to ship 200k copies. We're just a few million copies past that now!

Another thing about Grim Dawn, is that it has enjoyed an unprecedented tail on copies sold. Sure, it tapered off, but it's going remarkably strong even 8 years later. The pick up rate on expansions is also above average. These are some of the reasons why you have a third expansion on the way. :D

So metrics can be a bit misleading. :)

tho i'll add as a passionate gamer

generality and fame are no proof of worthyness, you either make games for the income and dump the licence once you've juiced it out to the brim that it stop being a profit income... or make them out of passion and care of them for years.

trying to mix both rarely bear fruit on the long run.

you would be surprised at how many games made success with 0 marketing.

minecraft
stardew valley
grim dawn
torchlight

to name a few.

[Blake]

Sometimes things are best being niche...become mainstream they become boring and sometimes lose the way in all the media hype.

Happens a lot with music bands.

[doru]

I've missed this game for years because I was thinking it was "Van Helsing" a game which I've played for a few hours and didn't liked at all. I've confused these two games in my head and never looked closely.

Years later I've figured out that this is not that game and instead is a successor to my favorite game of all times, Titan Quest.

[Renard]

It's not "overlooked", there are almost 80k reviews which means it sold millions of copies. It's fine for that kind of production value, it would need a lot more polish especially on the story and graphics side to hunt on BG3 territory.

[Safarel]

Originally posted by Renard:

It's not "overlooked", there are almost 80k reviews which means it sold millions of copies

8 or 9 millions, I don't remember exact number

[Benimaru]

This is one of those games I always come back to once in a while. Gameplay is great and mods have extended the life of the game.