500K sales, 13K reviews, and sub 1K players on averagely? This math isn't adding up.

[Zartanyen]

500K sales, ( supposedly) with only 13K reviews ( about 3% of sales) on a game that's pretty much only sold on steam, and keeps a average of under 1K players daily. ( less than 1/500th of sales) ( usually between 600 and 800) I can't be the only one that thinks these numbers are off. ( meaning inflated sales numbers.)

Either these sales numbers are inflated or this game is doing so terrible that only the most die hard fans of it stick around to play it still daily.

Your looking at over 99% of the people who bought this game leaving it. ( according to those sales numbers) Your obviously doing something wrong if you can't keep players around after initial sales, I mean grim dawn and even titan's quest have way better averages daily than this. ( grim dawn averaging triple the daily average and it's average peaks around your all time peak.)

The other thing that sticks out is your all time peak of 7200 with 500k sales? GD was over 60K and wolcen had over 120K ( I can only imagine their sales numbers if they had 120K plus on at one time, betting they made the over 500K sales mark with those numbers.) which would clearly show strong sales numbers, but you could only manage 7200 max with 500K sales???

These numbers are correct, ( doubting that myself) then your doing a absolute awful job on this game and aren't going to keep a sustainable amount of customers around to buy your mtx to keep it going once it launches. You must be praying for a wave of new customers at a launch ( probably in 2025 or so if keeping with your 2 year cycle of full .10 improvements.) but with POE2 probably coming out in 2024 and D4 going to be discounted at that time) but I wouldn't count on a huge amount.

You have a buyout clause in that tencent deal if your numbers drop to a certain percentage? I hope you do or can redo the contract to get one, because based off these numbers your going to need it to walk away with anything.

I think you need to start sending out some emails or having some survey on why people left last epoch and what you can do to change it to have some of these players return.

The development has been slow but there has been some nice improvements over the years, I am looking forward to seeing the mtx items, but if you can't keep customers around what will it matter as their will be no one around to buy them and even loyal fans might be on the fence about buying them if their's not a good number of players on the game for them to feel the investment is worth it.

I hope it doesn't happen, but I am going to bet this goes F2P within 2 years or less after 1.0 launch.

[Caxius]

Bruh, they probably included the game keys they've given away over the years. Kind of like when P-Diddy bought like 100,000 albums of a group he managed just to make it seem like they sold well.

It's like that....but funnier. And sad.

But mostly funny

[nacciw574]

This.

[Midrak]

Originally posted by Zartanyen:

500K sales, ( supposedly) with only 13K reviews ( about 3% of sales) on a game that's pretty much only sold on steam, and keeps a average of under 1K players daily. ( less than 1/500th of sales) ( usually between 600 and 800) I can't be the only one that thinks these numbers are off. ( meaning inflated sales numbers.)

Either these sales numbers are inflated or this game is doing so terrible that only the most die hard fans of it stick around to play it still daily.

Your looking at over 99% of the people who bought this game leaving it. ( according to those sales numbers) Your obviously doing something wrong if you can't keep players around after initial sales, I mean grim dawn and even titan's quest have way better averages daily than this. ( grim dawn averaging triple the daily average and it's average peaks around your all time peak.)

The other thing that sticks out is your all time peak of 7200 with 500k sales? GD was over 60K and wolcen had over 120K ( I can only imagine their sales numbers if they had 120K plus on at one time, betting they made the over 500K sales mark with those numbers.) which would clearly show strong sales numbers, but you could only manage 7200 max with 500K sales???

These numbers are correct, ( doubting that myself) then your doing a absolute awful job on this game and aren't going to keep a sustainable amount of customers around to buy your mtx to keep it going once it launches. You must be praying for a wave of new customers at a launch ( probably in 2025 or so if keeping with your 2 year cycle of full .10 improvements.) but with POE2 probably coming out in 2024 and D4 going to be discounted at that time) but I wouldn't count on a huge amount.

You have a buyout clause in that tencent deal if your numbers drop to a certain percentage? I hope you do or can redo the contract to get one, because based off these numbers your going to need it to walk away with anything.

I think you need to start sending out some emails or having some survey on why people left last epoch and what you can do to change it to have some of these players return.

The development has been slow but there has been some nice improvements over the years, I am looking forward to seeing the mtx items, but if you can't keep customers around what will it matter as their will be no one around to buy them and even loyal fans might be on the fence about buying them if their's not a good number of players on the game for them to feel the investment is worth it.

I hope it doesn't happen, but I am going to bet this goes F2P within 2 years or less after 1.0 launch.

Well analyzed, we can only speculate, at the beginning when the game was still very young, many bought it and gave it back. Because it used to be really bad. I was one of them. But later it got better and better, also because many players helped out who were now sold to the influencers and youtubers with the multiplayer. I usually buy all ARPGs that are similar to Diablo, but when I bought Last Epoch nothing really worked, even the left click to attack didn't work, so I returned it. Will this game find its player? Sure it depends on how they make this ♥♥♥♥ season's (I don't like it in every arpg game, just because they don't have enough imagination to run another system) For me it means playing an ARPG to grow to infinity. But that's just my opinion, is it possible? Yes, with a bit of phatasy, but something like that has long been dead under the market we have to live with. These are my 2 pfennigs on the subject.

[Caxius]

You can add up all of the concurrent player counts in the past, and it still comes to a fractionally dismal amount of people compared to how much they claim they've sold/given away or whatever.

[RodHull]

TBF those owned figures are pretty standard across most games. Games sell LOADS more than they ever have playing.

First you have to account for the vast majority of normal / casual players who maybe play it once for 8 hours then never touch it again cause new games come along, second you have to account for the keyseller sites which buy keys in bulk early in a games life and sit on them.

Wolcen if memory serves sold about 2 million copies, Grim Dawn was more a slow burn but it had a captive fanbase already as it was the old Iron Lore crew in a new guise.

That said the owned to player count numbers are telling. Even taking the above into account. It's cause they have focused on the most generic boring endgame imaginable. So nobody sticks around long term except the die hards.

[Caxius]

Originally posted by RodHull:

So nobody sticks around long term except the die hards.

You misspelled "try hards"

[Fenris]

Hum.
Like if would be something new in the video games's world...

You take an old game like Grim dawn.
7 years after his release (february 2016), only 27% of players has the "defender of cairn" achievement (complete the game).

"On May 31, 2020, one of the game's designers stated in a forum post that the game and its DLC were approaching a total of 5 million copies sold."
"On 25 February 2022 Crate announced that the game and DLC's had sold 7 million copies."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Dawn

5 or 7 millions copies sold but there is only 4,5K players on 24h peak, 7,3K on the months peak and 3.8K in average.
https://steamcharts.com/app/219990#7d

So, imagine for an Early Access, from a game not finished. Do you expect 500k players 24/24?

You can take all the games you want on steam and look which % of people finished the game or even somewhat how many of them completed act 1 or some achievement which proves they've played more than 1 hour, you will be surprised. (I always find this funny).
Not even speaking of people who have hundreds of games in their library they even didn't launched :)
Most of people barely play a long time with games, we're a minority.

"I can only imagine their sales numbers if they had 120K plus on at one time, betting they made the over 500K sales mark with those numbers."
Now you know it, 7 millions minimum. (after 7 years, after their release and not only in EA, and after dozens and dozens of -75% sales). For only 4K to 7K players.
Now, you can compare numbers with a game in EA, like LE, not officially released yet, with no sales more than -20%, and who had half of Grim dawn players during an event beta with only 1/14 of his copy sold (500k vs 7M).
And you will make the same thing after the 9th march, after the update too, if you want. I bet you that the numbers won't be the same as actually. And yes, of course, the numbers will decrease with time too, until the next update. It will happen before and after the release too. Like with every games during years, GD included, between periods with sales, and periods 2 or 3 months later, the GD numbers are far to be the same.

[Caxius]

Originally posted by Fenris:

Not even speaking of people who have hundreds of games in their library they even didn't launched :)

Oh, dude, this is me. 640+ games in my library. I've *maybe* completed 10-20 of them. Launched probably about 300.

[Fenris]

Originally posted by Caxius:

Originally posted by Fenris:

Not even speaking of people who have hundreds of games in their library they even didn't launched :)

Oh, dude, this is me. 640+ games in my library. I've *maybe* completed 10-20 of them. Launched probably about 300.

300 from 640+ and 20 completed, congratulations, you did better than a lot of steam players, you don't have to be ashamed, really :)
(seriously, look at achievements from any games, it's hilarious the number of people who didn't play or never went beyond the beginning of the games).

[Midrak]

Originally posted by Fenris:

Originally posted by Caxius:

Oh, dude, this is me. 640+ games in my library. I've *maybe* completed 10-20 of them. Launched probably about 300.

300 from 640+ and 20 completed, congratulations, you did better than a lot of steam players, you don't have to be ashamed, really :)
(seriously, look at achievements from any games, it's hilarious the number of people who didn't play or never went beyond the beginning of the games).

I could start getting upset about the capitalist system, which keeps destroying gaming, but I'll leave it at that. Allrdy talk it to death and no one care in the end, thats what you want, thats what you get!

[Zartanyen]

I would say I probably have 80% of the games in my library untouched or under a hour, but got most of them with humble bundles subscription and never intended on playing them.

The few I do play I do put a lot of hours into, this one I probably between 600 to 1k hours in going off playing the client directly from them and just getting this on steam at the start of the last event.

[wespe___o=/;;;:*]

My opinion:
Latest trick claiming 500k sold units. So where are the players?? °_°
500k ?? sounds like a typical marketing gag aka window dressing (preorders, etc) at best.
[LastEpoch is far away from Steam´s #top 100 bestselling games, never in #top10 weekly in last year, so how is that number generated ?! Seems hot air, zero proof, maybe Tencent Preorders]
-> not even 3,5k concurrent players in last 12 months. 10k stress-test flopped.. (2,286 peak)

No matter how you look at it, the math doesn´t add up. But even if those numbers were half true (aka to be realized on Release), I would be worried about the funding.. 70+ employees +Contractors costs easily 3-5M per year, meaning they run out of money again in 2024 latest. And NOBODY (not even bigger Streamers) said they want to use MTX for SHOP-cosmetics

>> The more PoE this becomes, the more it will be Wolcen 2.0 (which also had a devastating Release as many know)

Even 100k copies is huge - read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/w80uqn/how_hard_is_it_to_sell_a_100k_copies/

[Fenris]

POE has already been in the Steam Top 10 and for a long time, Grim dawn, him.... And people name it in the heavyweight category (what always surprised me, his numbers never been on par with others released big h&S).
So, it's better to be like POE than GD with his 7M but barely have 5 or 7K players in average (0.1% of copies sold, the ratio is even worse than LE in beta)
Expecting a game, from an indie company, not even released and only in EA, from a niche kind of game, being in Steam top 10. Seriously ?
You really dream and expect too much, or it's just an argument to try to create a bad buzz and bring down the game.
Even POE, never been in the top 10 before 2017, so years after his release.
https://steamcharts.com/app/238960
His success has been far to be immediate but build on the long term, with multiple updates during 4 years after his release.

[Koala 4peace]

Honestly, without data from more games and timeframes this does not tell me much, one way or the other.

An interesting take, but need more intel...

[B Unit]

I don't think the sales are made up. To many people there's just no real reason to spend a considerable amount of time in an Early Access game where key features are missing, wipes are in the future and development progress is *slow*.

The challenge for the devs will be creating enough hype for the full release that it doesn't just come and go like a fart in the wind.