# Update to Ars Technica's Steam Sales Article **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [March 5, 2015, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/update-to-ars-technicas-steam-sales-article/714290 "2015-03-05T17:15:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2015, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/update-to-ars-technicas-steam-sales-article/714290/1 "2015-03-05T17:15:41Z")
Looks like Ars has updated it’s investigative Article from last year, updating sales numbers for some of the most popular Steam games during 2014. > **[Steam Gauge: Measuring the most popular Steam games of 2014](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/steam-gauge-measuring-the-most-popular-steam-games-of-2014/)** > > Free-to-play dominates "sales," while pay-to-own dominates hourly usage. Some interesting tidbits: Skyrim is a sales juggernaut, adding another 3 million sales since the first article. So it’s sold over 10 million units on PC by now! Gee, I wonder if taking the effort to make your game mod friendly could benefit you as developer… hmmm… Some of the most owned games coming out in 2014: Unturned - 12+ million Robocraft - 5.34 million Heroes and Generals - 4.4 million Dead Island Epidemic - 3.9 million Loadout - 3.3 million Counter Strike Nexon Zombies - 2.7 million Warface - 2.3 million Civ: Beyond Earth - 2.1 million More around 1 million sellers in 2014 include: The Forest, Don’t Starve Together, Shadow of Mordor, Banished, Dark Souls II, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Divinity, and South Park. Some more stats: Dark Souls II - 964,266 South Park: the Stick of Truth - 929,442 Divinity: Original Sin - 802,315 Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel - 741,457 Thief - 971,028 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - 787,439 Transistor - 526,762 Wasteland 2 - 384,760 Far Cry 4 - 322,887 Octodad: Dadliest Catch - 279,272 The Evil Within - 250,533 Japanese Games doing just fiiine: Dark Souls 2- 964,266 Ultra Street Fighter IV- 451,366 (pretty sure this includes all owners of SSFIVAE, so it’s not only sales in 2014) METAL GEAR RISING: REVENGEANCE- 444,266 METAL SLUG 3- 443,928 FINAL FANTASY XIII- 327,959 The Evil Within- 250,533 One Way Heroics- 213,342 Valkyria Chronicles- 210,299 Dead Rising 3 Apocalypse Edition- 201,847 METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES- 192,042 Resident Evil 4- 170,403 DYNASTY WARRIORS 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition- 131,183 Agarest: Generations of War- 138,622 NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja STORM Revolution- 100,416 Vanguard Princess- 135,241 Sakura Spirit- 113,264 Pro Evolution Soccer 2015- 83,849 The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky- 107,516 Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2- 107,178 100% Orange Juice- 87,906 FINAL FANTASY® XIII-2- 159,922 Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae- 105,488 FINAL FANTASY III- 91,964 BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger- 85,540 Hatoful Boyfriend- 85,878 The Legend of Korra™- 57,139 Killer is Dead - Nightmare Edition- 64,239 Ikaruga- 52,406 Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~- 95,007 Strider- 55,787 Astebreed- 59,844 FINAL FANTASY IV- 75,397 NEKOPARA Vol. 1- 39,896 Double Dragon: Neon- 47,672 METAL SLUG X- 42,601 Common Japanese devs, get in on this! **Some Top sales picks (from me - check out article for more) in 2014:** CS:GO - 6.4 million Robocraft - 5.3 million Heroes and Generals - 4.4 million Company of Heroes 2 - 4 million Total War: Rome II - 3.9 million Saint’s Row IV - 2.6 million Also, less than half of Civ beyond earth owners have played the game. Hmmm… Also, Wasteland 2 350,000 sales. Common people, that’s RPG of 2014 along side Divinity! Buy it! Play it! ---
**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2015, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/update-to-ars-technicas-steam-sales-article/714290/2 "2015-03-05T17:26:12Z")
I imagine that the Beyond Earth are horribly skewed by the free weekend that it had. This article also seems really dodgy since stuff like Unturned barely ranks on the concurrent users steam stats page. I think Ars needs to revisit their methodology. For example, apparently Unturned peaks at 0.08% of its userbase playing concurrently. That doesn’t make any sense to me. ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2015, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/update-to-ars-technicas-steam-sales-article/714290/3 "2015-03-05T17:42:54Z")
> [@Palooka](#): > > I imagine that the Beyond Earth are horribly skewed by the free weekend that it had. This article also seems really dodgy since stuff like Unturned barely ranks on the concurrent users steam stats page. I think Ars needs to revisit their methodology. For example, apparently Unturned peaks at 0.08% of its userbase playing concurrently. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Actually Ars made sure that free weekends weren’t being counted. The numbers went up during the free weekend, but were restored once the free weekend passed. Several of the numbers have been cross checked by Ars and the NeoGaff community as well as by people on Reddit with known numbers mentioned by the actual devs. Not sure about Unturned’s concurrent numbers though. ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2015, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/update-to-ars-technicas-steam-sales-article/714290/4 "2015-03-05T18:58:48Z")
On the list of “Most Played Older Releases (2012 or Before) on Steam”, five out of the top twenty are from Paradox: Hearts of Iron 2 Complete Victoria II Hearts of Iron III Europa Universalis III Darkest Hour: Hearts of Iron But where’s Crusader Kings II, arguably their greatest hit? Also, who the frak is still playing _CivCity: Rome_? ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2015, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/update-to-ars-technicas-steam-sales-article/714290/5 "2015-03-06T03:46:48Z")
> [@Terminus\_Est](#): > > On the list of “Most Played Older Releases (2012 or Before) on Steam”, five out of the top twenty are from Paradox: > > Hearts of Iron 2 Complete > Victoria II > Hearts of Iron III > Europa Universalis III > Darkest Hour: Hearts of Iron > > But where’s Crusader Kings II, arguably their greatest hit? > > Also, who the frak is still playing _CivCity: Rome_? You’re misinterpreting this category. It’s “Mean number of hours played per owner (\>40k owners)” - Hearts of Iron 2/ Darkest Hour are certainly nowhere near the top 20 most played pre-2012 games. Probably not top 200. But apparently the people who do own it put a lot of hours into it. Their methodologies here are weird and none of these numbers look right. See [steamcharts](http://steamcharts.com/) for a decent actual look into what’s being played. They seem to count some F2P games and not others - and when it comes to ownership those should either be listed separately or require that something actually be bought to count. These charts give the impression that all sorts of F2P crap dominates the steam played charts, but they don’t. I doubt those numbers even then. For example, Dead Island Epidemic has an average player count somewhere in the range of 800, but we’re supposed to believe that 4 million people have played it? As someone who keeps an eye on the pulse of what’s popular on steam fairly regularly, these lists would give a grossly distorted view of what’s actually being played on steam. I’d hate for people to think the most popular game on PC is some minecraft+zombies bullshit.