COH2 sold 4 million units in 2014

Aside from some of the other points established in this thread, I feel like the steep learning curve and unforgiving gameplay of RTS', especially those made by Relic are the main reason most people won't stay and play.

I definitely was turned off of vCoH after only a few online matches and resigned myself to compstomps and the fantastic campaigns the first game offered. The same thing happened when DoW2 first launched, and until Chaos Rising came out and I forced myself to play through loss after loss I never fully enjoyed the online scene in RTS'.

These games take a substantial amount of trial and error to find out the nuances and techniques that are required to gain competency and confidence in your play. Your average gamer is not going to jump into multiplayer and suffer harsh losses and still have the desire to sit through 20-40minutes of games and replays, or go online to read about how to improve on their mistakes.

Having said all this, while this game has it's flaws(in design and application) I'm still happy to see it receive success both financially and in terms of increased playerbase. Most games lose players over time, but a jump of 2000 average players in it's second year is somewhat impressive considering the massive amount of flak it has received for (unfounded imo) pay to win allegations and the Russian boycott for the campaign.

"Dear boy?" What's that supposed to mean?

People ask me why I'm playing in this picture. The answer is simple: Money, dear boy. I'm like a vintage wine. You have to drink me quickly before I turn sour. I'm almost used up now and I can feel the end coming. That's why I'm taking money now. I've got nothing to leave my family but the money I can make from films. Nothing is beneath me if it pays well.

Laurence Olivier

No, you edited after I posted

there are loads of people that just buy games and never play them, you also have to remember that humble bundles only now use one product key, so people will buy bundles for one or two games they want but a bunch of others games they might not care about get added to their library.

In which case that would inflate all game's sales figures, not just COH2

I did not say it was just CoH2 did I? The person asked why people would buy games and not play them, I just gave a reason. I'm fully aware that other games would also be affected by bundles.

Tbh this really isn't that impressive, the RTS genre is dead, COH2 had very little in the way of serious competition in 2014.

What is the point of that graph? Many of these "best selling steam games" listed are actually free to play: unturned, robocraft, war thunder, warface, warframe

What is the point of that graph? Many of these "best selling steam games" listed are actually free to play: unturned, robocraft, war thunder, warface, warframe

So people can attempt to rationalize the game having more bugs in it than a cockroach hotel.

Frankly, I'm so happy. It means that Relic is doing fine financially. I remember that there were rumors about SEGA wanting to shut Relic down but I think after this, Relic will live.

A lot of those sales might be commanders, and even steam sales, but it's still a great success if you ask me, other games go on sale too.

Well, I hope this helps them get more resources from SEGA to develop DoWIII. If they announce DoWIII in E3 this year, I'm gonna die...

PS: Gods and Generals??? Come on people that game is not even 50% finished.

Aww dude I grew up in that age.
But you forgot Dune 2, Populous the Beginning and Wolfenstein 3D.
Note: Thief is my favourite game of all time.
Man what went wrong? It was looking so promising. Mind you I think the Total War games and VCoH shone through...

But you forgot Sopwith, Paratrooper and 688 Attack Sub.
But all those games couldn't hold me for as long as CoH2 did.
And about so having so low online with that much copies sold - I think the reason is in MOBA games.
They are easier to play and less stressful.

people buy games and don't play them because they collect them, because they think they might play them, and/or because they compulsively buy games on steam. i am guilty of all three.... this is why i have 885 games in my steam library and have installed, never mind played, less than a quarter of them.

https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561198005340204/

My Steam Profile (from SteamDB)

• Worth: $10795 ($2948 with sales)
  
  
• Games owned: 896
  
  
• Games not played: 656 (73%)
  
  
• Hours on record: 5,928.8h

people buy games and don't play them because they collect them, because they think they might play them, and/or because they compulsively buy games on steam. i am guilty of all three.... this is why i have 885 games in my steam library and have installed, never mind played, less than a quarter of them.

https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561198005340204/

Man... This is addiction

people buy games and don't play them because they collect them, because they think they might play them, and/or because they compulsively buy games on steam. i am guilty of all three.... this is why i have 885 games in my steam library and have installed, never mind played, less than a quarter of them.

https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561198005340204/

You are awesome and, one-handedly, keeping several game studios afloat.

You are my hero.

What is the point of that graph? Many of these "best selling steam games" listed are actually free to play: unturned, robocraft, war thunder, warface, warframe

I wouldn't be surprised if these graphs don't actually differentiate between sales and free games and actually just show an estimate of downloads.

Considering the number of free weekends CoH2 got, 4 million downloads sounds about right.

If that were the case, Dota 2 would be #1 by a ridiculous margin. They likely count DLC purchases as sales.

"As it happens, all the data needed to track sales figures on Steam was hiding in plain sight. The core of our data comes from the individual profile pages on Valve’s SteamCommunity.com social portal, such as this one for yours truly. Prominent on each of these public pages, again just a click away, is a list of every game that Steam users have registered to their accounts. This page also lists how many hours they’ve played for each of those titles.

Crucially, for our purposes, these profile pages don’t even require a specific username (e.g. http://steamcommunity.com/id/KyleOrl/) to access. They can also be brought up using a unique, usually hidden identifier known as a Steam Community ID number. As detailed on the Steam Developer Wiki, every individual user on Steam gets a unique 64-bit SteamID that can be converted algorithmically to a 17-digit decimal number, starting at 76561197960265729 and going up sequentially from there. That’s why my profile page can also be accessed using a URL in the form http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197980357107 (you can find your own hidden SteamID number and Steam Community ID using this site; if you get results in the form of "STEAM_0:X:XXXXXX," put those results through again for the URL-able ID).

Currently, the range of valid Steam Community IDs extends to include about 172 million pages (with some small gaps of invalid IDs occasionally popping up in the middle). Theoretically, if we could look at every one of those profile pages, we would have a comprehensive list of every game owned by every Steam user. Functionally, we here at Ars don’t have access to the kind of computing power needed to churn through hundreds of millions of webpages in a timely manner.

What we do have is a basic understanding of random sampling and an Amazon EC2 server instance that can scrape through more than a 100,000 pages a day. Using our knowledge of the Steam Community ID structure (and some light PHP/MySQL coding), we’ve been conducting what amounts to a rolling, randomized poll of the Steam user universe for about two months now. Using this method, we've generated a generalized estimate of Steam sales and gameplay numbers."

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gauge-ars-reveals-steams-most-popular-games/

So a sale in regards to CoH2 would be anyone who purchases either the core game, Western Front Armies, US Forces, OKW or Ardennes Assault. As purchases of these specific products add the game to your library. Buying the Case Blue DLC or a commander on its own would not do this.

If that were the case, Dota 2 would be #1 by a ridiculous margin. They likely count DLC purchases as sales.

That doesn't explain how War Thunder, Unturned and the like made it to the top of the list.

..we’ve been conducting what amounts to a rolling, randomized poll of the Steam user universe for about two months now. Using this method, we've generated a generalized estimate of Steam sales and gameplay numbers.

Well, CoH2 had at least one free weekend during the past 2 months.. Any download during that time would count as a sale.

War Thunder has DLC content packs on Steam, Dota 2 doesn't. All of Dota's DLC is cosmetic and has to be purchased in-game, not through Steam, with the exception of a single item pack related to a documentary they released about it.

As for those updates, they completely reset the counts, not add to them. So if they did an update during a free weekend they would likely see a large increase in numbers, but since free weekend games are removed from your library after the free weekend is complete any subsequent updates would override those numbers. The only way that would be a factor is if the update they used for their report happened to fall directly after a free weekend, which is incredibly unlikely.

EDIT: Dota 2 isn't on there because of bugs in Steam's API, and it does look like they're counting ownership as a "purchase" regardless of whether the game is free-to-play or not. Still, my point about free weekends stands, they won't be counted on there because when the free weekend is over the games are removed from your library.

Reading through their methodology a bit closer, I'm fairly confident their sales graph refers to the delta of ownership numbers between April 2014 and March 2015. You can't see WFA/AA purchases in your public library since those are considered CoH2 DLC items, but purchasing only WFA is considered a full purchase because it adds the entire CoH2 game to your library.

For example, if I own CoH2 and purchase WFA, that WFA purchase won't show up on this graph because it doesn't add anything to my library; it just adds some DLC to my account. However, if I don't own CoH2 and purchase WFA, that WFA purchase will show up on this graph because it would add CoH2 to my library, which would allow it to be picked up by their profile scraping code.

This will be different from any other game because?

Because people buy CS:Go, try it for a bit, then keep trying it even when they move onto another game.


CS:GO on sale for 3.74. People buy it. Play it a bit. Keep playing it casually.
COH2 on sale for 10.00. People buy it. Play it a bit. Don't play it anymore.

League of Legends and Dota are free. People download it for free. People play it and keep playing it.

Difference is bolded.

Because people buy CS:Go, try it for a bit, then keep trying it even when they move onto another game.


CS:GO on sale for 3.74. People buy it. Play it a bit. Keep playing it casually.
COH2 on sale for 10.00. People buy it. Play it a bit. Don't play it anymore.


Difference is bolded.

And on what basis are you saying people download COH2 and stop playing it?

[Reading through their methodology a bit closer, I'm fairly confident their sales graph refers to the delta of ownership numbers between April 2014 and March 2015. You can't see WFA/AA purchases in your public library since those are considered CoH2 DLC items, but purchasing only WFA is considered a full purchase because it adds the entire CoH2 game to your library.

For example, if I own CoH2 and purchase WFA, that WFA purchase won't show up on this graph because it doesn't add anything to my library; it just adds some DLC to my account. However, if I don't own CoH2 and purchase WFA, that WFA purchase will show up on this graph because it would add CoH2 to my library, which would allow it to be picked up by their profile scraping code.

So:

If someone owned Core Game in 2013 and bought AA and/or WFA then that is not a sale because the Core Game is already on the system

If someone buys Core Game, AA and WFA in the period in question, that equals 1 sale.


So really that is 4 million game sales, not Commanders, Skins or anything else and WFA/AA don't get double or triple counted

I have that correct?