Steam sales figures for Paradox games

[korodikrisz]

Recently Steam sales were released. They include players who have launched a game which has developer-set achivements, so the list is not full.

Cities: Skylines 6,132,366
Magicka 4,976,290
Crusader Kings II 3,170,312
Europa Universalis IV 1,983,657
Stellaris 1,967,015
Hearts of Iron IV 1,352,834
Pillars of Eternity 1,275,530
Magicka 2 857,543
Age of Wonders III 764,290
Tyranny 562,631
Teleglitch: Die More Edition 453,247
Cities in Motion 2 451,407
BATTLETECH 289,619
Cities in Motion 237,970

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018...-precise-player-count-for-thousands-of-games/

 

[Matt714]

Didn't Ck2 make Humble Bundle? That could explain the discrepancy.

 

[Gurkhal]

Ok, these are just numbers to me. Could someone explain what these numbers actually mean? What's good and what's bad?

 

[korodikrisz]

I don't think there is good or bad in these numbers. First, these are just base games without DLC included, not even sales are included. If there is a game, that has achivements, and someone starts it (first time), the number increases by one. That's it.

I just posted in here, because there were topics (in almost every game forum) on how well the sells are. Well, this doesn't explain, since it counts only (base) game starts. Also knowing the play time should be important. Well, not profit wise, but popularity wise, i. e. if 3M people plays average 20 hours CKII, but 2M players play 40 hours of EUIV, I would consider EUIV the more popular one. Steamspy has a bit better infos about playtimes, maybe all of them together can make some nice conclusions, for the ones interested in it.

 

[Dauth]

You did miss Cities: Skylines at 6,132,366.

I'm a little interested to know how these compare with PDX's numbers. It might be low for ck2 depending on how the gog version was out together.

 

[korodikrisz]

Probably even higher, as these are Steam only game lauches, no GOG or purchases included. Cities added, thanks, forgot about that.

 

[Denkt]

Johan said their most successful game is Stellaris.

The list don't tell us how much revenue each game have brought in and it do not tell about how many DLC each game have sold.

 

[macd21]

Johan said their most successful game is Stellaris.

He was probably talking about the rate at which it’s selling. Based on these figures, it’s sold about as much as EU IV despite being a much newer game.

 

[C.N.]

Didn't Ck2 make Humble Bundle? That could explain the discrepancy.

No, it's not that, most Paradox games have been on Humble Bundle.
It's more probably that it's because they had a free giveaway for CK2.

Also:
Magicka 4,976,290
Magicka 2 857,543
Teleglitch: Die More Edition 453,247
Age of Wonders III 764,290
Cities in Motion 237,970
Cities in Motion 2 451,407

 

[yyrkroon]

Ugh, Battletech numbers so low. Its a solid game, not a masterpiece, and certainly doesn't have an EUIV type 2k+ hours in it, but I'd like to see a second one, so had hoped it sold more.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Ugh, Battletech numbers so low. Its a solid game, not a masterpiece, and certainly doesn't have an EUIV type 2k+ hours in it, but I'd like to see a second one, so had hoped it sold more.

Low? You think 289k on Steam a few months after release is bad for a game with a small budget released on Steam, GOG, and Humble and the recipient of critical acclaim from reviewers? You've got to be kidding.

You will see DLC and/or a second one; Paradox bought HBS to have them as a studio after the success of publishing Battletech.

Read the FAQ Paradox published after the purchase was announced.

 

[Dagda]

Didn't Ck2 make Humble Bundle? That could explain the discrepancy.

Then again, CK2 originally released on gamergate so the steam figures alone won't be totally accurate. Not to mention the fact that a large chunk of sales are made in the first few weeks of release ,which is a massive steam platform advantage CK2 wasn't given compared to to the others on that list.

 

[Johan]

Then again, CK2 originally released on gamergate so the steam figures alone won't be totally accurate. Not to mention the fact that a large chunk of sales are made in the first few weeks of release ,which is a massive steam platform advantage CK2 wasn't given compared to to the others on that list.

The gamersgate numbers were smaller than most rounding errors in Sales Estimations these days.

 

[Dagda]

The gamersgate numbers were smaller than most rounding errors in Sales Estimations these days.

Scary to think how much an inevitable CK3 is going to sell. I'd imagine it would smash Stellaris' early success with proper marketing/hype campaign.

 

[Dreamexpress]

Yeah the ck2 free giveaway there were hundred of thousands players online at the same time most just downloaded and started to get achievement points. After a day it was back to ordinary player numbers of ten thousand or so.
So ck2 figures are not really accurate.

 

[Willem IV]

Shocked by the amount Cities: Skylines copies that have been sold. Well done!

 

[Susanna]

I think part of that is that it's a really good game in a genre whose fans had felt starved and battered after what happened to the Sim City franchise. When CO released Cities Skylines, Sim City 4, a game over 12 years old, was still the gold standard in the city builder genre.

Not anymore. And fans of city builders noticed. And they bought.

 

[Searry]

I think part of that is that it's a really good game in a genre whose fans had felt starved and battered after what happened to the Sim City franchise. When CO released Cities Skylines, Sim City 4, a game over 12 years old, was still the gold standard in the city builder genre.

Not anymore. And fans of city builders noticed. And they bought.

I disagree. For me the standard still is the Sierra city builders. Not a single game since has caught the magic of these games. Great soundtracks, awesome gameplay, difficulty, economy management.

 

[Furrnox]

So Battletech was considerd a financial sucess at about 290k sales but Tyranny was considerd a failure at 560k how does that work?
Did Tyranny really have that much of a higher budget?

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

So Battletech was considerd a financial sucess at about 290k sales but Tyranny was considerd a failure at 560k how does that work?
Did Tyranny really have that much of a higher budget?

If Tyranny had sold 560k in the first two months after its release it would probably have been considered a success. It didn't.

This was a leak from July 1st 2018. Battletech was released April 2018, so a bit more than 2 months earlier. By the time of the leak Battletech had not gone through any sales, so the numbers active on Steam represents games that have been bought either at full price, with small discounts, or through the kickstarter (and the kickstarter was only 42k people, some of whom will have chosen to get their game on other platforms).

Tyranny was released November 2016, so 19 months earlier, enough time to go through several sales. It was not funded by crowdfunding, so it had to recoup its investment purely through sales. A few months after lunch people using steamspy were talking about 150k steam players. As always, treat these numbers with some caution, but were that was anywhere close to the truth it would be pretty disastrous.

Regardless of whether those steamspy numbers made sense or not, Tyranny has since then been through several sales as well as at least one "free to play" weekend, apparently resulting in 560k players having an achievement in the game by July 1st - which tells us absolutely nothing about number of sales or the average sales price of the sales that have been made. Buy the game at full price, 50%+ discount, or try for free - so long as you get an achievement, it counts for exactly the same in list.

As for budgets, who knows? Well, Paradox obviously, but we don't. What we know is that Battletech started out with 2.8M USD for development collected from 42k backers, and that's a pretty small budget these days. Given the larger amount of graphics and text assets in Tyranny, I'd be shocked if Tyranny didn't have a larger budget, but I might be wrong.