Valve leaks Steam game player counts

So, CAPSLOCKISMYNAME's Lootboxstore has mad over a billion dollars of income, even after making Valve's already bursting wallet a few hundred million fatter. I wonder when will they spend it on someone who knows what a netcode is instead of lawyers. (As if they really could go against Epic. I kinda hope this time the shark swallows the fish whole so Brendan Greene can start working on this exact same game the fourth time now.)

Never, I guess. They lost something like 1 million of players in a few months, let's be realistic, at this point no one would spend money on the netcode or on the core game, they'll just "support" the game with new maps\weapons and "cheap" stuff

and Bethesda refused to pay Obsidian the full amount citing "bad reviews".

That's a rather misleading way of phrasing the matter. Bethesda refused to pay a bonus, because they two companies had agreed in Obsidian's initial contract that Obsidian would get a bonus only if they received 85% or higher on Metacritic.

It's clearly on Obsidian for agreeing to such a risky condition, given how unpredictable Metacritic scores are. Consider that critics on the site are typically either out of touch with audiences, or are completely lacking in established reputation or stable review presence [Several of New Vegas' reviews link to dead sites now, for example]; Moreover, such scores would have been easily influenced by Bethesda and, given their established abusive business practices, wouldn't necessarily be out of character for them to do. Add in a general downward trend on scores due to the handful of critics that thrive off posting predominantly negative reviews, and you've a pretty bad framework to try and succeed against.

Further, negative commentary in the metacritic scores was exclusively directed toward the bugs in the game which, of course, is a Black Isle/Troika/Obsidian hallmark (and of Bethesda, of course, which means Obsidian was working at a negative to begin with, using their engine). Thus, that also can be attributed to Obsidian, meaning we can't even fixate on either the usual Bethesda or Metacritic issues, as they do in fact seem to be secondary to Obsidian's own responsibilities [though, do note, New Vegas released during a really rough, layoff-heavy time in Obsidian's history, so it isn't as if they don't have solid excuses for any shortcomings their delivery may have had].

I'm completely fine taking Obsidian's side against Bethesda as often as possible, but it's really hard to consider this particular circumstance a firm strike against Bethesda. (Though Bethesda did receive criticism as a publisher for not doing more to ensure New Vegas launched well- so between that, their choice of contract terms, and their usual sketchy practices, they're presumably not entirely blameless for the end result, either.)

This is the greatest comment anyone has even posted.

This means companies cannot whine about low income and games losing mney. Nor PUBG players continue rambling that it has better sales than CS:GO.

"leak" =/= "bad"

Doesn't have achievements

The second most played game on Steam is of-course, not dead.

Right, and the article assesses as much. However, it's more data than we've ever had to go on-- so yes, it does have some value.

Actually this leak is more fun. Steam tracks all users for % of achievements. And gave that ration to 16!!! decimal points. So with multiple achievements it was relatively simple to calculate how many users there are total with the game.

Ofc, free weekends and family share screws up things.

You got it wrong, the numbers are interpolated from Steam's "percentage of players getting the achievement", so in your example, if in Game 1, steam shows 50% people got Achievement1 and the leaked data shows 1M people got Achievement1, then the table shows the game as being owned played by 2M users. In Game 2, if 99% got Achievement1 and the leak shows 1485000 people got the achievement, then the table shows the game as played by 1,5M users.

its cause consoles have a set number of multi-player games and players gravitate to where the communities are but on pc you have a much grater number of games that split the pool of players. it's not dead just more competition.

It's actually (or it was, depending of what you think of Steam Direct) the best generation for PC gaming as these numbers are higher than ever. Consoles had always the lead, but the gap has shrinked over time, mostly because of Steam and the other digital stores.

Steam claims to have 125M total users, of which around 70M monthly active users (i.e. users active last month).
PS4 sold around 80M copies so far.
XBone under 30M copies.
Switch under 20M copies.
Steam numbers from 2017, Console number from 2018. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles, https://www.geekwire.com/2017/valve-reveals-steams-monthly-active-user-count-game-sales-region/
56% of gamers played on PC vs. 53% on any console (as of 2016). Source: https://www.polygon.com/2016/4/29/11539102/gaming-stats-2016-esa-essential-facts

Best selling PS4 games, sold 7M - 8M copies. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStation_4_video_games
Same for XBone. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Xbox_One_video_games
Best selling switch games sold 10M - 11M copies. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_Switch_video_games
Best selling PC games (as we see above) 30M - 50M copies.

All-in-all If I was a game developer, I would much rather develop for PC.
Both in size of the potential audience. and the average number of copies sold.
The only number we're missing is how much each game costs to the end user and how much of that ends up in developer's hands.

Do explain.

Remember, this is not a "current player count", this is "how many people have any achievements".
And KF had bunch of free weekends and also still provide Guess Passes you can throw around at friends.