Subnautica's player base has almost doubled in the last 3 months

[shponglefan]

I've been following the Subnautica stats on SteamSpy* lately (http://steamspy.com/app/264710).

Based on the change in owners, it appears that Subnautica has almost doubled its player base since December, and the pace of adoption has increased dramatically.

The stats start back at end of March 2015. At the time Steamspy reports about 40,000 owners. Between that time and towards the end of Dec 2015, the player base increased by 250,000, totalling ~290,000 owners. That's roughly 27-28,000 new players per month.

But from the end of December to now, the player base has increased by another 288,000. It's now almost 580,000 total. That's 96,000 new players per month in that 3 month span; more than triple the previous adoption rate.

Two things happened in the last three months. First, Subnautica has been on sale three times: the winter holiday sale, the Chinese new year sale, and recently midweek madness. There are obvious spikes in new players during each sale which can be seen in the Steamspy charts.

Second, Markiplier started playing Subnautica back at the end of December and has released 18 videos averaging between 1 to 3 million views apiece. I'm not sure how much Markiplier has influenced sales, but I imagine it's played at least some role in the faster rate of adoption.

At any rate, it's been fascinating to see this game take off over the last few months. And certainly it can only be a good things for future development of this game. :)

(*disclaimer: I have no idea how accurate the information from Steamspy is. So take this analysis with a grain of salt.)

[Cephy]

Wow, no matter how accurate the information is, I believe it. This is impressive to see! I am one of those from about November and the game has evolved immensely since then. Devs, you obviously know what you're doing and you know how to do it, keep up the awesome work!

[shponglefan]

Steamcharts has been showing some dramatic increases in average concurrent players, and new peak player records. So that seems to corroborate the spike in new players. Good news indeed. :)

http://steamcharts.com/app/264710