How many people play KSP?

[SpaceastronautX]

Thanks for this small question! Because before this we didn't know that question.

[Daid]

Sales does not equal players.

I think the achievements of Cave Story+ always reflect this nicely. As the initial set of achievements is gained with progress:

http://steamcommunity.com/stats/CaveStory/achievements/

 

I'll see that many players quit early. A few hours into the game you have about 30% of the players left. Long time players, usually less then 10%.

[Jart]

21 minutes ago, Daid said:

Sales does not equal players.

I think the achievements of Cave Story+ always reflect this nicely. As the initial set of achievements is gained with progress:

http://steamcommunity.com/stats/CaveStory/achievements/

 

I'll see that many players quit early. A few hours into the game you have about 30% of the players left. Long time players, usually less then 10%.

Or many players mod KSP.  Achievements are not recorded on a modded game.

[Rath]

On 9/17/2016 at 5:16 PM, Rath said:

Everybody note that they also hide sales figures because they don't want to be known as rich in Mexico city.

I find it really funny that it says that @RX2000 and @DolphinDude3 like this.  Sorry but as a vBulliten supporter, I must say that this is another reason not to like the current forum.  But it is nice to see who reped a post.

[RX2000]

14 hours ago, Rath said:

I find it really funny that it says that @RX2000 and @DolphinDude3 like this.  Sorry but as a vBulliten supporter, I must say that this is another reason not to like the current forum.  But it is nice to see who reped a post.

I liked it cause having lived in Mexico for a couple years, I thought it was a pretty true statement.

[regex]

http://steamspy.com/app/220200

1.55 million Steam owners. Add in Store, GoG, consoles, etc... and I'd say we're looking at 2+ million in sales easily.

[Meithan]

steamdb has nice info on the number of concurrent Steam players (which is much less than the total number of persons who have bought the game and a better indication of the size of the active community); I'm attaching the graph below.

The largest peak, which surpassed 17.5k players, was due to release of the game (i.e. 1.0), while other substantial but temporary player increases correspond to version updates (0.25, 0.90 and 1.1) or the Christmas holiday season. The fast oscillations are week cycles (people play more on weekends).

All in all, we're talking about a 4-5k constant player base, at least on Steam. Hard to tell how the numbers look outside of Steam or on the console.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Meithan

[numerobis]

Paid copies is one thing; active players is another, and they're not precisely connected. Some people buy games and never install them (particularly on Steam). Some people play games they never bought. Some very dedicated people play games actively for a while and then drop them -- for a game that's been around for five years that's going to be a lot of people.

And with the KerbalEDU program, that makes it even harder to evaluate how many individuals were touched by the game versus how many seats were sold.

[Curveball Anders]

21 hours ago, Meithan said:

on Steam

Which means that the dataset is quite limited and doesn't say much.

[Meithan]

39 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

Which means that the dataset is quite limited and doesn't say much.

It's hard to say without having an idea of what proportion of KSP users play through Steam. I just don't know. But I somehow suspect that Steam is the dominant platform for KSP.

[Curveball Anders]

6 hours ago, Meithan said:

It's hard to say without having an idea of what proportion of KSP users play through Steam. I just don't know. But I somehow suspect that Steam is the dominant platform for KSP.

The uproar when the prior pre-release was restricted to Steam users made it seem a bit different.

But that's only amongst the very limited dataset of people who actually write on the forums.

[wrobel-cwirek]

I play in separate instance, Steam just is for downloading new version and stays mod-free always (and mostly not played).

[RizzoTheRat]

3 hours ago, Curveball Anders said:

The uproar when the prior pre-release was restricted to Steam users made it seem a bit different.

But that's only amongst the very limited dataset of people who actually write on the forums.

When did it become available on steam?  Presumably not right from the start.  I bought my original copy from the store years ago, and I'd guess if it only became available on Steam a bit later in it's life there's a lot of long term players who bought from the store.

[Curveball Anders]

21 minutes ago, RizzoTheRat said:

When did it become available on steam?  Presumably not right from the start.  I bought my original copy from the store years ago, and I'd guess if it only became available on Steam a bit later in it's life there's a lot of long term players who bought from the store.

It was the 1.0 (I think) pre-release (similar to the one running now) where Squad used Steam's distribution to push out patches but didn't have it set up for non-steam users.

Some people got a bit upset over it

 

[Gaarst]

13 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

It was the 1.0 (I think) pre-release (similar to the one running now) where Squad used Steam's distribution to push out patches but didn't have it set up for non-steam users.

Some people got a bit upset over it

 

1.1pre was on Steam only. And I got very upset over it

The game went on Steam after 2012. Don't know when exactly.

3M is what I'd settle for. Half Steam half other.

 

Edit: the game went on Steam somewhere between late 2012 and early 2013, according to a quick search on the forums.

Edited September 21, 2016 by Gaarst

[Curveball Anders]

33 minutes ago, Gaarst said:

3M is what I'd settle for. Half Steam half other.

Or half steam and half other including steam users who doesn't start their game(s) via steam (but only uses it for updates).

[Meithan]

6 hours ago, Curveball Anders said:

The uproar when the prior pre-release was restricted to Steam users made it seem a bit different.

But that's only amongst the very limited dataset of people who actually write on the forums.

I'm not basing my feeling on people who write on the forums, but on Steam's general success as a game-distribution platform, which is due to 1) widely known and good publicity; 2) very convenient and fast distribution (i.e. download); 3) great prices (I've bought many a game during a Steam sale that I would perhaps not have bought otherwise).

But again, this perception could be wrong. A poll on the forums, maybe? It would be biased towards the most active players, but I can't think of any other way of clarifying this. 

 

3 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

When did it become available on steam?  Presumably not right from the start.  I bought my original copy from the store years ago, and I'd guess if it only became available on Steam a bit later in it's life there's a lot of long term players who bought from the store.

KSP was first available on Steam as early-access. I started playing around 0.20 iirc, and I've used Steam since the start. That was in May 2013.

Edited September 21, 2016 by Meithan

[Curveball Anders]

41 minutes ago, Meithan said:

but I can't think of any other way of clarifying this.

There are no way to clarify it.

Not even Squad knows more than the number of sales (since phone home is optional).

[Jart]

6 hours ago, wrobel-cwirek said:

I play in separate instance, Steam just is for downloading new version and stays mod-free always (and mostly not played).

A large percentage of people who use mods do this.  It is the smart thing to do.  My stock steam game gets auto updated my modded games are separate instance.  This prevents an update for the game from interfering with your mods.