• A small post regarding transcribing source, especially twitter. Please make sure to read the thread here.

  • ⭐ Install Base Badges ⭐

    Install Base introduces its brand-new Badge system. Check out the details here!

  • 📰Sales Design Gazette: A Video Game Sales Magazine #001📰

    Check out the first release of Sales Design Gazette: A Video Game Sales Magazine at the thread here!

2023 STEAM Concurrent Players (CCU) Official Watch Thread

Reader mode
derby_440 said:
Starfield is now 3rd in top selling Steam games, behind BG3 which is 2nd. Poor legs.
Click to expand...
Mcbel said:
It's very possible Starfield is having good legs, just not as leggy as the exceptional BG3 legs.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I would just wait until next week to see the weekly best-seller list.
Starfield will most like stay at #1
But even that week isn't indicative of legs at all. It will be the week after that.
 
SoonyXboneUhh said:
Yeah, I would just wait until next week to see the weekly best-seller list.
Starfield will most like stay at #1
But even that week isn't indicative of legs at all. It will be the week after that.
Click to expand...
Starfield has been below BG3 for several days on the steam live chart, even before the Tuesday reset.
BG3 should be above Starfield this week unless the current trend changes.

One funny super outlier between the two is with Japan.
Starfield is still #1 and BG3 is at #50. The reason is obvious, BG3 currently has no Japanese translation. I assume it's going to come later this year, possibly with the PS5 version being published by Spike Chunsoft (with a Physical release!). Snooping around, it seems that the post-release JP translation of D:OS2 was not very good, so hopefully it's better for this game.

In other news current MK1 CCU Peak is at 26,290
 
Starfield will have legs of course. Especially since Bethesda has announced years of support.

BGS games are one of the few SP games in the industry that last forever with others like Nintendo, Blizzard, Rockstar... Even Fallout 76 with one of the worst launches ever and no mods support survived dozens of GaaS and will probably end up with 20-25M players at the end.
 
Vault-Tec said:
Starfield will have legs of course. Especially since Bethesda has announced years of support.

BGS games are one of the few SP games in the industry that last forever with others like Nintendo, Blizzard, Rockstar... Even Fallout 76 with one of the worst launches ever and no mods support survived dozens of GaaS and will probably end up with 20-25M players at the end.
Click to expand...

I don't think that was never in any doubt, it's a Bethesda RPG after all. Curious to see where they'll go from there with the game in terms of expansions/dlc.

FO76 will keep on trucking as updates keep coming in and no Fallout SinglePlayer game is on the horizon. That last part hurts me deep inside.
 
Mortal Kombat ports are notoriously shit on PC, no crossplay between platforms is awful for fighting games too. It's not going to do that well, probably better than it should despite all those things though, MK has good casual appeal.
 
Last edited:
Blue Monty said:
Isn’t it no crossplay between PC and consoles while it exists between consoles?
Click to expand...
Yes, sort of.

Playstation players can crossplay Xbox.

Windows PC players can crossplay Xbox.

Xbox players can crossplay both Windows PC and PlayStation.

Switch, Steam, EGS and Stadia players get no crossplay.
 
fiendcode said:
It's nuts when you compare to how Capcom has grown on PC by prioritizing the platform and crossplay. They went from 14k peak CCU in SFV to 70k peak CCU in SF6.
Click to expand...

Capcom supporting PC heavily in between those releases is going to do that. That and the fact that launch SF6 is like x10 times better than launch SF5. This is also reflected by the fact there's still on average a 20.5-22k~ peak CCU everyday on it's 4th month of release. For anyone not familiar with the fighting game genre, that's a VERY good retention rate.

Butzke said:
Starfield tracking more than 20% down from its first weekend.
Seems the reviews took out its legs, and Cyberpunk 2.0 releasing wont help the matter.
Click to expand...

I will be very interested to see what happens to the CCU for the release of Cyberpunk 2.0
 
Concurseiro do Futuro said:
I wouldn't rule out a "Starfield 2.0" in some months. Should be great.
Click to expand...

I don't think it'll be in the same magnitude but I could see it happen. Better Nvidia drivers, Bethesda releasing features that should've been there at launch. Culminating in the release of their first DLC, no release date on that one at this time though. I remember how Far Harbor for FO4 managed to make players sing it's praise, it's possible that first story DLC could have a similar impact if it's good enough.

Honestly, Cyberpunk 2.0 is really 3.0 in terms of waves of players coming back to the game. Witcher 3 Netflix series and the Cyberpunk Anime really did it's job in acquiring new players.

I mean look at these numbers beginning in September 2022, it only got back to more normalized to previous levels in February : https://steamcharts.com/app/1091500
 
Evilnemesis8 said:
I don't think it'll be in the same magnitude but I could see it happen. Better Nvidia drivers, Bethesda releasing features that should've been there at launch. Culminating in the release of their first DLC, no release date on that one at this time though. I remember how Far Harbor for FO4 managed to make players sing it's praise, it's possible that first story DLC could have a similar impact if it's good enough.

Honestly, Cyberpunk 2.0 is really 3.0 in terms of waves of players coming back to the game. Witcher 3 Netflix series and the Cyberpunk Anime really did it's job in acquiring new players.

I mean look at these numbers beginning in September 2022, it only got back to more normalized to previous levels in February : https://steamcharts.com/app/1091500
Click to expand...
I really hope Xbox do that with Starfield. Should be great to build loyalty.
 
Concurseiro do Futuro said:
I really hope Xbox do that with Starfield. Should be great to build loyalty.
Click to expand...

I'm always rooting for RPGs, so I hope so as well.
Speaking of RPGs, it'll be interesting of Starfield can stick around so we have 3 singleplayer RPGs(!) in the top 10 played games on Steam when either Cyberpunk 2.0 comes out on the 21st or when it's expansion comes out on the 26th.

GaaS games getting a run for their money, you love to see it.
 
Interesting tidbit (at least to me): according to SteamDB, in the last 24 hours on Twitch BG3 had a higher peak # of viewers than Starfield.
 
Mcbel said:
Interesting tidbit (at least to me): according to SteamDB, in the last 24 hours on Twitch BG3 had a higher peak # of viewers than Starfield.
Click to expand...

It's also currently about the same number of viewers, up a few hundreds actually even though BG3 has been out quite some time. Although, when games are weeks off releases, numbers can sometime fluctuate when it comes to peak viewers just by one or two random bigger streamer deciding to play your game at the right time of day.

That being said all metrics, be it it's position on the top global seller, twitch metrics and number of reviews trickling in tells us BG3 really has big PC legs.

Will be interesting to see what kind of "damage" CP2077 is going to do to BG3/Starfield in terms of their weekly sales position as well as their CCU drops when 2.0 drops and 5 days later when the expansion comes out proper.

Speaking of which it's good to be on the a lookout to see how stable and perfomant the update(s) will be for CP2077. I want to say that CDPR knows that this has to be a smooth and pristine second "relaunch" to get some more goodwill back but you never know.

Edit: Bunch of typos and missing words.
 
Last edited:
Kind of an aside but almost 23k concurrent for Wandering Sword (and a solid review score) strikes me as very good.
 
Lies of P has passed 11k CCU in it's first hour of unlocking on Steam(11 AM EST).
CCU peak should be limited and most likely be today, due to the fact it's coming out on a Monday and those sort of games are fairly short if you're any good and thus won't have access to a weekend bump.

Recent Notable Soulslike releases in the last few years that I can remember in order of release date.

2023 - Remnant 2 - 110,856
2023 - Blasphemous 2 - 9,055
2020 - Nioh 2 - 41,325
2019 - Code Vein - 33,895
2019 - The Surge 2 - 3,719
2019 - Blasphemous - 3,247


Edit: PayDay 3 Early Access CCU is currently at 28,627 with the same unlock time of 11 AM EST.
 
Last edited:
Unless something very uncommon happens, Both PayDay 3(Early Access) and Lies of P Day 1 release have hit their peak for the day.

2023 - Remnant 2 - 110,856
2023 - Blasphemous 2 - 9,055
2020 - Nioh 2 - 41,325
2019 - Code Vein - 33,895
2019 - The Surge 2 - 3,719
2019 - Blasphemous - 3,247

Lies of P hit a CCU of 13,421 which I believe is a pretty respectable number for a Korean Studio and Publisher that had little visibility worldwide before this game.
It did not beat things like Nioh 2 and Code Vein but Nioh was a known quantity by the 2nd game and Code Vein was published by Bandai Namco and had the anime aesthetic which made it standout from the other games within the space.

The game is also on Gamepass.

Looking at the general early consensus, we get a very respectable steam rating of 90% with a very positive reaction to the performance of the game. Lots of rigs are able to run the game at a steady 120 FPS depending on settings used. Looking at some of the negative reviews, it ranges from the less serious "From Soft is still the king, this is an insult to Souls" to things like sneaking in Denuvo a few days before launch. Some critique of the dodge/parry "feel" which was a concern raised and noted during the demo of the game back in June.
But overall, the reception seems positive and with a good performance, should be something that has decent legs on PC unless the perception of the general public changes.

Little tidbits that I found interesting while looking at the charts. Lies of P did hit #1 at some point today in the top charts in Italy ( it's now #2 behind the Steam Deck discounted) I guess Italians interest was roused by the Pinocchio setting. Unsurprisingly Lies of P is #1 in South Korea, with it being the only country in which the Deluxe Edition is close to the top, it was Top 10 at some point.


Moving on,

PayDay 3 hit a CCU peak of 35,213
For comparison PayDay 2 had a CCU peak of 35,220 today

With PayDay 3 the technical beta was a sign of things to come. It seems the performance woes of the game during this Early Access is around the same level as the "older build" that was used for the beta. There's some UI tweaks and some performance enhancements but nothing major.
Unfortunately it looks like StarBreeze Studios is still struggling to get things going past PayDay2(a 2013 release) Their last release prior to PD3 was 2018's Overkill's The Walking Dead which was a megabomba with MC rating of 51!




Looking a little ahead, tomorrow at 9PM PDT/12PM EST is when MK1 full release happens, will be interesting to see. I know about the Switch atrocious version, but I haven't paid attention to the PC performance or how Mortal Kombat fans feel about the launch offering of MK1 compared to MK11.
 
Last edited:
When analysing the current ccus trend for Payday 3, it shouldn't be ignored that the game is available to play only for customers who purchased the Silver ($69.99) or Gold ($89.99) Edition of the game, therefore it's currently in the Early Access phase; the full release through the Standard Edition ($39.99) is slated for this thursday.
 
MarcoP90 said:
When analysing the current ccus trend for Payday 3, it shouldn't be ignored that the game is available to play only for customers who purchased the Silver ($69.99) or Gold ($89.99) Edition of the game, therefore it's currently in the Early Access phase; the full release through the Standard Edition ($39.99) is slated for this thursday.
Click to expand...

I did mention that it was in the EA and considering how many games are doing Premium editions nowadays with EA I just figured it was assumed and understood.

But you're right, that's knowledge known to me but perhaps not everyone who might just pass by the thread.
I'll try to remember to include that somewhere in future breakdowns just to be more thorough.
 
Lies of P seems bad performance? at least based on my expectations. But it is on GP too I suppose.

Starfield 161k CCU as I type this (and we know most players are on GP) 4th place. now 19 days since early access. It seems players are embracing it in spite of reviewers. Or it would have fallen drastically quickly.
 
Lies of P didn't strike me as a game that was going to do massive numbers because of Gamepass and where it launched. An EA-weekend into a Monday full launch is probably a pretty bad combination if you're looking at CCUs (not necessarily bad in terms of the game's performance), too. It's reviewing very well on Steam though so maybe it'll pick up a bit on word of mouth.
 
salesguy said:
Lies of P seems bad performance? at least based on my expectations. But it is on GP too I suppose.

Starfield 161k CCU as I type this (and we know most players are on GP) 4th place. now 19 days since early access. It seems players are embracing it in spite of reviewers. Or it would have fallen drastically quickly.
Click to expand...
Somehow I did not know this. What were your expectations for it?
 
Last edited:
Weekly Global Top Sellers for the Week of September 12th to 19th 2023

  1. CSGO
  2. Steam Deck
  3. Baldur's Gate 3
  4. Starfield
  5. Mortal Kombat 1
  6. PAYDAY 3
  7. Apex Legends
  8. PUBG
  9. Lost Ark
  10. Lies of P

Bonus : Cyberpunk 2077 at 13 and it's Expansion at 16



Baldur's Gate 3 remains in the same position it has been in the last 4 weeks. In general this is a very heavy new release week. Looking ahead at the current top sellers, Baldur's Gate is currently at number 6th due to the aformentioned new releases, and another one, Party Animals is also set to release on the 20th.

Edit: A little formatting oopsie.
 
Last edited:
Evilnemesis8 said:
Weekly Global Top Sellers for the Week of September 12th to 19th 2023

  1. CSGO
  2. Steam Deck
  3. Baldur's Gate 3
  4. Starfield
  5. Mortal Kombat 1
  6. PAYDAY 3
  7. Apex Legends
  8. PUBG
  9. Lost Ark
  10. Lies of P

Bonus : Cyberpunk 2077 at 13 and it's Expansion at 16



Baldur's Gate 3 remains in the same position it has been in the last 4 weeks. In general this is a very heavy new release week. Looking ahead at the current top sellers, Baldur's Gate is currently at number 6th due to the aformentioned new releases, and another one, Party Animals is also set to release on the 20th.

Edit: A little formatting oopsie.
Click to expand...
Imagine just two months ago saying in a thread about BG3 moving their release date to dodge Starfield that they would sell more on Steam in week 7 than Starfield manages in week 2
 
salesguy said:
Lies of P seems bad performance? at least based on my expectations. But it is on GP too I suppose.

Starfield 161k CCU as I type this (and we know most players are on GP) 4th place. now 19 days since early access. It seems players are embracing it in spite of reviewers. Or it would have fallen drastically quickly.
Click to expand...

This kinda makes it sound like the game has a 50 on metacritic lol
Post automatically merged:

Shantom said:
Imagine just two months ago saying in a thread about BG3 moving their release date to dodge Starfield that they would sell more on Steam in week 7 than Starfield manages in week 2
Click to expand...

Maybe it's Starfield that should've ran from BG3 j/k
 
Shantom said:
Imagine just two months ago saying in a thread about BG3 moving their release date to dodge Starfield that they would sell more on Steam in week 7 than Starfield manages in week 2
Click to expand...

Certainly not Larian Studios, I think it's an understatement to say they're happy with how everything turned out.

Also, Party Animals is climbing fast.

That game is the most wishlisted game on Steam currently beating games like Silksong/Hades 2/and a bunch of very PC centric upcoming games. It also has almost 500k followers. Game is currently #7 with a pricetag of 26.99CAD.

Metacritic is currently at 77, but Fall Guys is at 81. Fun party games like these are not really for critics.

Guarabyra said:
This kinda makes it sound like the game has a 50 on metacritic lol
Post automatically merged:



Maybe it's Starfield that should've ran from BG3 j/k
Click to expand...


Godd Howard reverted to just Todd Howard in front of the might of BG3 😂
/s
 
Last edited:
It seems to me like it was more the other way around. Starfield was very well received by critics, in the top 4% of all games on Opencritic, and the general audience reaction is not as strong. CCU decay for Starfield seems pretty standard, in line with WoM being good but not amazing.
 
Xevross said:
It seems to me like it was more the other way around. Starfield was very well received by critics, in the top 4% of all games on Opencritic, and the general audience reaction is not as strong. CCU decay for Starfield seems pretty standard, in line with WoM being good but not amazing.
Click to expand...

Context matters here. 83(or 86 on OC) is a really good score, but if you said that's where it'd end up pre-launch most people would call you crazy.
 
Lies of P actually managed to climb further today with a new record CCU of 16,832.
The peak yesterday for this game was 13,421.
The game still has a respectable 88% positive on steam ( it was 90% ).

Mortal Kombat 1 full launch CCU Peak ended up being 38,129.
Mortal Kombat 11's launch was 35,147 back in 2019.

This is not great growth considering how much bigger Steam is in 2023 compared to 2019.
Mortal Kombat 1 DID have a 5-day early access period with it's Premium Edition, which did negatively affect the peak CCU of today's proper launch day.
Even so, the game has a 75% positive rating on Steam, so some fans are not clearly happy. Some PC specific issues but most of it seems to be monetization/design decisions that I'm not too familiar with to compare with previous MK games.
I will note that even the negative reviews seem to mostly say that the gameplay feel/loop of this game is better than MK11 which I seem recall was a sticking point from the core FGC audience with the previous game.
It may be possible to act upon some of the concerns that the players might have with the game in future patches or in an expansion like MK11 did with MK11: Aftermath
 
Charamiwa said:
When you see the type of numbers Remnant 2 pulled, I was also expecting more. I was thinking a Souls clone with even a little hype behind it would do better.
Click to expand...
Remnant 2 already had some established fanbase thanks to the previous entries, is a bit cheaper and it’s not in any sub service. Also at least imo Remnant being ‘Souls with guns’ is more appealing than ‘Bloodborne clone’, ofc both games are a lot more than that but that’s what these games seem at first.
 
master94ga said:
To be honest I expected more, probably the are too many games right now and is hard to gain attention, expecially for small title
Click to expand...

Absolutely. It's also on Gamepass and was released there one day earlier than the actual game release.

Charamiwa said:
When you see the type of numbers Remnant 2 pulled, I was also expecting more. I was thinking a Souls clone with even a little hype behind it would do better.
Click to expand...

Remnant is and performs better than a just "souls" clone.
In fact the CCU for the first game was 48,289 back in 2019 and the game had some decent legs and WoM among PC and console players.
Remnant 1 beat Nioh 2 and any other very good performing soulslike, the sequel was always going to outperform pretty much anything but FromSoft games by a mile.

Blue Monty said:
Remnant 2 already had some established fanbase thanks to the previous entries, is a bit cheaper and it’s not in any sub service. Also at least imo Remnant being ‘Souls with guns’ is more appealing than ‘Bloodborne clone’, ofc both games are a lot more than that but that’s what these games seem at first.
Click to expand...

The multiplayer and gunplay aspect gives it a much larger appeal for sure. Shooting things on mouse and keyboard is something very desirable.

Lelouch0612 said:
Lies of P numbers are very promising, I'd say it will cross 20.000 CCU without issue.
Click to expand...

We'll see.

I will note that its best performing market in terms of where it is on the charts is South Korea, Japan and Italy.
SK and Japan being one of the bigger markets for the game works against it for peak CCU because of the whole timezone thing.
 
Party Animals (PC/Xbox) has already surpassed 100k CCU on Steam. Game is on Game Pass console but not on PC Game Pass.

ab33.png
 
Vault-Tec said:
Party Animals (PC/Xbox) has already surpassed 100k CCU on Steam. Game is on Game Pass console but not on PC Game Pass.
Click to expand...

Numbers have been going down, currently at 92,083.
34% Positive on Steam, most complaints I can see are the lack of servers on a global scale as well as other network related complaints, this is most unfortunate for a game of this type.
 
Butzke said:
Now its dropped to 35k, wow. 42% positive on Steam
Click to expand...

Yeah, very steep drop.
This had the potential to be a very large game for a short while at least, but the botched launch, even after two delays just stopped that from happening.
The amount of potential lost revenue from releasing the game in this state is probably a very big number.
 
store.steampowered.com

Steam Charts

Top selling and top played games across Steam
store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com

Lots of things are in flux in the Global Top Sellers list with all these new releases, some of them less well received than others who should quickly fall down in a day or two.

Baldur's Gate 3 is currently at #7 while Starfield dropped all the way down to #14 showcasing the difference of their legs on Steam.

CP2077 has received a 40% discount to the base game and a 33% discount to it's Base+Expansion bundle today ahead of the 2.0 update and 5 days before the Expansion launch.
It's currently 9th, 10th and 16th for the Base game, Expansion and Bundle respectively.
Review embargo for the Expansion has lifted 3 hours ago and lots of articles are coming out about the game. A quick glance and most of the big outlets are saying that CP2077 is basically at where it should've been at release and praising the new expansion.

Still early days, will be interesting to see the new players reaction as well as returning players reaction to the revamp and expansion.


Lelouch0612 said:
Lies of P numbers are very promising, I'd say it will cross 20.000 CCU without issue.
Click to expand...

Lies of P did not beat the CCU of yesterday, it's peak for today is 16,819
Yesterday's current peak CCU for the game was 16,832
Hilariously close difference of 13 players between the two days.
 
Last edited:
16k is very very good for Lies of P, imo. It's not such a big game/such a big publisher behind and it has a simultaneous game pass release, I wouldn't really expect more.
 
It's a new day for me. Which means I'm snooping around, two big launches today with PayDay 3 getting it's full release and CP2077 releasing it's 2.0 update.

I'll focus on CP2077 right now.

The unlock time should be around 5PM CEST, the livestream begins at 4PM CEST and per one of their community manager, they wish to unlock the 2.0 version around the end of the celebratory livestream, no firm timing. A bit odd not to have a firm time for people, but oh well.

Currently the game is globally at 5th, 7th, 9th for the Base Game, Expansion, Bundle respectively. This is very respectable numbers considering it could still climb further and it's a 3 years old game which already had it's first "2.0" moment with the boost that game was given with the Edgerunners anime cross-media effort last year.

How much it can continue to leg out will depend on the WoM.

One interesting tidbit I've found while browsing all the top markets in https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/global

Is that almost all western countries have the Base Game doing the most revenue, followed by the expansion and then the bundle.
But as I'm writing this China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan all have the Bundle ahead of the Expansion with Hong Kong having the Bundle ahead of both the Base Game/Expansion.

I'm not too sure how to interpret this in any other way than Steam's growth in Asia?
Maybe the west that was blasted with media and discourse about how disappointing CP2077 was, still has people cautious?


Edit : RE4 discount+Ada DLC release has made the dynamic duo crash into the top 10 out of nowhere.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom