Valve Leaks Steam Game Player Counts

Megalith

Megalith

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Thanks to a (now patched) hole in Valve's API, there is a definitive ranking of Steam games (with developer-defined Achievements) based on player estimates. Team Fortress 2 is in first place with over 50 million players, trailed closely by Counterstrike 2 at 46 million. The full CSV may be accessed here.

Because this data is derived directly from Steam's API for each game, it ends up much more precise than the old Steam Gauge/Steam Spy estimation methods, which relied on random sampling of a small portion of the Steam player base. But this method only works for games with developer-defined Achievements, so it covers about 13,000 of the roughly 23,000 games now on Steam.
 
Close groupings I wouldn't have guesssed: Terraria (13.1m) and Skyrim (13.2m), Saint's Row IV just edging COD:MW2 (5.2m each), the battle of the Vs (Civ5 with 12.7m, GTAV with 12.6m). Plenty to delve in to, and the high rankings of many non-f2p indies was a general shock, though maybe it shouldn't have been given their frequent place in various bundles over the years.
 
Ahow many high-selling games don't have Steam achievements?
 
I wonder why Valve is so secretive about this data.

There are some interesting stats in here. Sid Meier's Civ V has sold way way WAY more than Civ6.

Goat Simulator has outsold Half Life 2: Episode 1.
 
ACTIVE player counts would be more interesting. A decade old F2P game is of course gonna have a zillion TOTAL players, but for all intents and purposes, TF2 is deader than a doornail. You can actually pinpoint the update that put the nail in the coffin using Steam Charts as probably being the Jungle Inferno update.

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JDanser said:
ACTIVE player counts would be more interesting. A decade old F2P game is of course gonna have a zillion TOTAL players, but for all intents and purposes, TF2 is deader than a doornail. You can actually pinpoint the update that put the nail in the coffin using Steam Charts as probably being the Jungle Inferno update.

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I wouldn't call 43k concurrent players being "deader than a doornail." I would consider less than a hundred concurrent players "deader than a doornail."
 
This makes me hate the banished developer even more for abandoning the game. 24M after steams cut, fucker could have hired 5 people for 2 years to just update and shit. and still walk away with millions!
 
As others would have said, active player counts (depending on definition of active ) would be much more interesting and useful. As expect there are many F2P titles here and some of which may have very low numbers of actual player - or at least, lower than their installed base would suggest. However there's still some interesting data here. I have to say that Steam needs a MAJOR update to how it counts and reports some of its metrics. Especially as one who prefers Linux, there are tons and tons of pitfalls in how games are counted on purchase and play that severely under report Linux (and probably Mac to some extent); a major issue when developers/publishers use these metrics to decide on the viability of porting and/or supporting the platform in addition to Windows! If anyone is interested in some of the foul-ups I'd be happy to go into more detail along with some hypothetical alternatives and fixes.

Regardless, this leak of Steam data is interesting but much like other sorts of official and unofficial data alike, can very easily be extrapolated into erroneous conclusions so lets hope that few will attempt to base major decisions upon it.
 
[21CW]killerofall said:
I wouldn't call 43k concurrent players being "deader than a doornail." I would consider less than a hundred concurrent players "deader than a doornail."
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A lot of those are bots in crappy "farming" server or whatever they are. Man, Valve really turned that game to shit. I want to play it but finding a proper match is hard
 
People have been saying TF2 is dead since shortly after release. So by all means, keep beating the dead horse. Nobody cares when people say it, TF2 keeps on going.

JDanser said:
ACTIVE player counts would be more interesting. A decade old F2P game is of course gonna have a zillion TOTAL players, but for all intents and purposes, TF2 is deader than a doornail. You can actually pinpoint the update that put the nail in the coffin using Steam Charts as probably being the Jungle Inferno update.

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