What Can Steam Chart's January Figures Tell Us About PC Racing Games?

[Michel Bélisle]

When seeing the numbers for AC and ACC I just wonder what the developers think. It took ages for Kunos to do very little and now the skillful modders have done miracles with original AC. Should they consider hiring these modders to earn a buck?

This is a very sensible idea. It would off load their staff to work on ACC and, at the same time, they could release more DLC for AC which would generate more revenue.

 

[Kostas Kaloudis]

iRacing has around 60.000 users

 

[Damage Inc]

For all those not understanding why ETS2 and ATS are so popular.....one word....TRUCKS!! If you love trucks you'll have strong chance of loving these games!

 

[St3fan]

I am not an iRacing fan by any means, but

Sadly Steam Charts can't tell us how many play iRacing. Anecdotally it is in the same ballpark as AC.

this is so far away from the truth and I am actually interested in knowing where that "anecdote" comes from, because most sources will just straightforwardly state that iRacing has far more active players than any of the PC sims.

People think "serious simulators have lower player counts because they are less approachable", but iRacing might be the least approachable sim out there with the high cost and sometimes strangely harder to drive cars than other sims. People state "sim X has a low player count because the graphics are not impressive", iRacing also has kind of average graphics with octagon tire walls, no proper driver animation, and mediocre car interior modeling in some cars.

iRacing gets frequent updates. You can feel they are working on improving the game all the time. You can see their marketing team hard at work. You get very quick response from the support team when you submit a technical/purchase issue ticket. You can see your favorite car enthusiasts Youtubers talk about iRacing or play iRacing (similar to the amount of exposure of Assetto Corsa, Forza/Forza Horizon, Gran Turismo, Project Cars you see on these Youtube channels). Organized hourly races make people have a reason to play the game. Also I want to point out that these hourly races are far more attractive than weekly league races to average people, because if you practice for a track/car combo you can play competitively for many races across a whole week and polish your skills, instead of preparing for just one race. It turns out people are willing to pay for that.

The player count is, IMHO, proportional to the number of aspects that a sim gets right. Top of the notch graphics will give you maybe 100 player count; good physics another 100; great support team another 100; interesting car/track selection another 100... If a sim only does one or two things right, even if a sim is the best in one of the aspects, it will not get a huge player count.

 

[Metla]

I am not an iRacing fan by any means, but

this is so far away from the truth and I am actually interested in knowing where that "anecdote" comes from, because most sources will just straightforwardly state that iRacing has far more active players than any of the PC sims.
.

So, whats the truth then? On average, how many players are ingame at one time on iracing?

 

[St3fan]

So, whats the truth then? On average, how many players are ingame at one time on iracing?

When I am typing this reply iRacing website is showing 4718 racers online. For people who are broke like me and only go to rookie series using free contents (by "free" I mean no additional spending on top of the sub fee), 85 people have signed up for the next street stock oval race, and 84 people have signed up for the next MX-5 road race.

 

[Metla]

When I am typing this reply iRacing website is showing 4718 racers online. For people who are broke like me and only go to rookie series using free contents (by "free" I mean no additional spending on top of the sub fee), 85 people have signed up for the next street stock oval race, and 84 people have signed up for the next MX-5 road race.

So, around the same ballpark figure of concurrent users as AC?

 

[Ironwall]

I think its funny that nobody on this forum is talking about the Trials Series! Its some sort of racing game too. And I can strongly recommend it! Its a lot of fun as a singleplayer or as a partygame. It is not even that expensive. You can buy your Trials Rising Key here. This side seems to be legit. I bought a few games there aswell. Tell me if you want to play along. I could use a good partner

 

[St3fan]

So, around the same ballpark figure of concurrent users as AC?

No. AC has peak number like just 4000. iRacing has at least 4000 like consistently all the time. Online race participation is also obviously higher, which is also the main reason player numbers matter.

 

[David Wright]

iRacing has at least 4000 like consistently all the time. .

Not according to this guy

https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...ut-pc-racing-games.164365/page-6#post-2908952

 

[St3fan]

Not according to this guy

https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...ut-pc-racing-games.164365/page-6#post-2908952

So? 3k+ is still like AC peak number value and not far off from my rough description (I am in US which is probably where iRacing is most popular -probably the reason I am seeing over 4k all the time, and the 3k-ish number was posted at noon in East US on a work day and Friday dinner time at CET). If one game's peak number is at the same level as the other games average level, they certainly are not at the same ballpark.

There are more statistics available on iRacing forum posted every iRacing season. I just don't know if those are considered private to that forum so I didn't quote.

Also because the OP was put on the front page of RD, which gave me the impression that this article was supposed to be the top quality statement from the official RD media team. I was trying to make a point as "RD should get some actual iRacing number(s) before posting this on the front page as a headline article".

 

[David Wright]

Another guy who doesn't agree with St3fan that iRacing has at least 4000 like consistently all the time. .

https://www.reddit.com/r/iRacing/comments/72ax8i/why_are_they_so_many_empty_races/

 

[mr Sw1tchblade]

2k18 info

 

[St3fan]

Another guy who doesn't agree with St3fan that iRacing has at least 4000 like consistently all the time. .

https://www.reddit.com/r/iRacing/comments/72ax8i/why_are_they_so_many_empty_races/

OP of the reddit post is Australian and his time zone is like the most inconvenient for the continental US to show up on the number he sees.
I just logged on iRacing.com and the number is 5000, and the peak number of AC has got over 5000 only once when it was first launched in March 2015.
Anyone who has sub to iRacing will know it has a large number of active players. No need to search all over the internet to convince people AC is doing as good, because in terms of active player number AC is clearly not. In terms of online participation (again, this is why active player number really matters), AC is much inferior to iRacing. If you focus on racing and not Nordschleife track days or Touge or drifting, the gap will be bigger.

I just checked that last season the most popular official race series Global Mazda MX-5 Cup had 15922 participation number, and that means if totally averaged, 15922/13/7/24 = 7.29 entries per race (every hour). There are in total 15 different official series that have a participation number that averaged to more than 2 entries per race. Current season is at week 9, and the number of players that have participated at least 1 race in these 9 weeks is 18185. The number of players that have participated at least 10 races in these 9 weeks is 4033. 127 players have not missed any 1 week of the 9 weeks. There are also private leagues and other individual-hosted series. iRacing's stats are like all over the place. It is quite tedious to find interesting numbers. Also the "average online player count" is almost not all that important for iRacing itself because the participation number is more interesting as people need to know what series content to buy, and sign-up number is more important as the dev needs to know how much money they can continue to burn.


Here is the thing: If an RF2 fan talks to an AC fan who plays RF2 from time to time, and tries to convince the AC fan that for him it is not hard at all in RF2 to find an online race and play with other people, the AC fan will check RF2 online server browser and be convinced that it is not easy to race in RF2. And the RF2 fan actually will scratch his head and feels strange because he feels it is not hard to find a race at all. Actually both of the two people are not wrong in their own ways. Same things if you replace RF2/AC with AC/iRacing. In 10 minutes the P1GTR Euro AC race will start on Sim Racing System, and 22 people have signed up. In iRacing the Global MX5 race will start with 82 entries.

 

[Metla]

So, are we all in agreement?, Anecdotal evidence indicates AC and iRacing are in the same ballpark?

Excellent.

 

[mr Sw1tchblade]

@Metla Assetto Corsa 1997 players/month total vs 70000+ in iracing. Hmm

Also
https://www.twitchmetrics.net/games/viewership?page=3
You can find ETS at 2nd page.

 

[Metla]

@Metla Assetto Corsa 1997 players/month total vs 70000+ in iracing. Hmm

Also
https://www.twitchmetrics.net/games/viewership?page=3
You can find ETS at 2nd page.

Uh, what?

Apart from your own statement, how is this validated?, and how does it correspond with the concurrent users data that has been discussed?

Since when was twitch viewership part of the discussion or in anyway relevant to it?

hmm?

This is dumb, and getting dumber.

 

[mr Sw1tchblade]

@Metla
Assetto Corsa have 1997 players/month total-you can see this in op post. And noone can say if most of em playing online or offline. I assume offline. Iracing had 70000 players in the beginning of 2018 (i found this info using google). This means at list you will find online races faster in iracing than in AC.

Twitch= more viewership=> more potential owners.
So no. AC is not even close to Iracing. Also from my experience game with less than a 5000 online players=dead game. I am playing fighting games from time to time (1vs 1 pvp) and if game goes below 5000 you will loose 15-30 mins waiting for random fight,and also you will fight vs 2-3 same persons.

 

[David Wright]

So, are we all in agreement?, Anecdotal evidence indicates AC and iRacing are in the same ballpark?

Excellent.

Hopefully yes

Perhaps we should say, iRacing does seem to have more concurrent players than AC but it is in the same ballpark. Its not in the same ballpark as PC2 or F1 2019 (PC users) - it has more than double their users. Its not in the same ballpark as ETS2 which has about 8 times more players.

 

[David Wright]

@Metla
Assetto Corsa have 1997 players/month total-you can see this in op post. And noone can say if most of em playing online or offline. I assume offline. Iracing had 70000 players in the beginning of 2018 (i found this info using google). This means at list you will find online races faster in iracing than in AC.

Twitch= more viewership=> more potential owners.
So no. AC is not even close to Iracing. Also from my experience game with less than a 5000 online players=dead game. I am playing fighting games from time to time (1vs 1 pvp) and if game goes below 5000 you will loose 15-30 mins waiting for random fight,and also you will fight vs 2-3 same persons.

You are not the first to misunderstand the steamchart figures. They are not the total number of players. It is the average number playing at the same time taken over a month. For example, earlier in the thread someone reported there were 3245 players playing iRacing (not at peak time) and steam showed 2894 playing AC at a similar time. Steamcharts takes these concurrent player numbers measured every hour (which for AC might be a peak of 4000 and a low of 1000) and averages them.

You can't directly compare sales of a conventional game such as AC with active membership of a subscription game like iR. The iRacing figure of 70,000 does not include all those lapsed iRacing members, but for what its worth AC had sold 826,000 copies by June last year. Clearly for iRacing to have the concurrent players it has, many of those 826,000 must no longer be playing AC and I suspect that iRacing subscribers are much more active than owners of AC (or indeed other non-subscription sims).