Skyim breaking Steam record -- a singleplayer game has 240,000 users online | Hacker News Reader

Skyim breaking Steam record -- a singleplayer game has 240,000 users online

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Almost twice the former record keeper -- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, released in 2009

Wow, Counter-Strike is still number three, over ELEVEN years after release?!

And it's usually #1, when other games aren't being launched...

For what it is, it's about as close to perfection as you can get. That is what gives it a longevity that other games have a lot of trouble matching. You see this in all genres, though, for example, I have no doubt that if Starcraft were on here, you would see it showing a similar longevity.

It has been developed and revamped over time. Counter-Strike today has not much to do with the original HL mod.

The original Counter-Strike is no longer actively developed is it? Yet, surprisingly, it seems to be ahead of Counter-Strike Source, the newest addition.

CS:S has higher requirements, and the gameplay changes pissed off a lot of the hardcore CS crowd. I know people who still kvetch about Valve nerfing deagle-hopping.

The two games also combined today for more players than MW3 Multiplayer (likely the long term predominant portion of it), and since I'm assuming Skyrim numbers will eventually die down, it's often still the most played game on Steam.

That'd be "Skyrim"

Sorry for that...

I didn't know what skyrim was, beyond a vague awareness that it was a game, so I went to elderscrolls.com, only to encounter a flash-wrapped video with no volume control.

I see this particular usability faux pas way too often. If you roll your own flash video player rather than host videos elsewhere or use one of the mainstream well-designed open/commercial flash video player apps, let viewers control the volume.

Binary On/Off sound toggles on flash apps are ridiculous. Furthermore, a custom flash video player app should remember the volume setting (per-domain) so viewers don't have to monkey with the volume every time that flash app appears.

Anyone that picky about a Flash video would know perfectly well that an "official website" is the last, least useful place to look for information on a topic.

If it weren't for those damn spiders, it'd probably be double that number.

Those are great numbers for PC gaming. I wonder what the ratio is for playing vs. bought.

Todd Howard, the game director at Bethesda Game Studios, has recently claimed that consoles make up about 90% of their overall game sales. If this is still true for Skyrim it means this game likely has massive sales #s for a single player RPG, or any other game for that matter.

what's trippy to me is how smooth and recognizable that cosine wave is

No, it's totally a sine wave.

Yes, those pesky dudes who see a cosine are +pi/2 heretics and should be burned at the stake.

I'd like to see a longer data set.

Judging from the small segment we see, it appears the peaks (U.S. evening and night) hours are sharper than the troughs (U.S. working hours). I expect the peaks on weekends are higher and broader.

Fun. :-)

Try http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/ e.g. http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php?action=graph&...

I find it amazing how so much chaotic data can be represented by simple abstractions.

Is that really a Steam record? The table shows the number of people who are playing NOW and the peak in the last 24 hours.

It seems so at least according to http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php

For a chart with these numbers have a look at http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php?action=graph&...

I don't think those are quite correct...for instance, today's peak counter strike player count is only 6000 fewer players than the "all time" peak count on that site. Counter strike players are stubborn, but not that stubborn.

If you go to the graph screen, the graph only goes back to mid march 2011 and won't go back any farther, no matter how far back you request. It probably began gathering stats then.

On the subject of Steam can someone answer this question for me regarding Steam's pricing...http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3229558 I used to get around the problem in my country by using a VPN, but that no longer seems to work/

Use Entropay to pay. Use store.steampowered.com/?cc=us and a browser and a VPN and a US steam account to buy, then gift it to your actual account. Works like a charm.

I was surprised to find people still go for the single player RPG genre. I've been playing Skyrim after its midnight release here in New Zealand.

On another note, I've also noticed the Mac App Store is selling the new Batman Game. Is the Mac App Store a viable competitor to Steam?

That doesn't sound right, Batman: Arkham City isn't out on PC yet. Do you mean the old one, Arkham Asylum?

My apologies, you're right. It's Arkham Asylum.

What does "online" mean when talking about a single player game?

I am thinking about playing oblivion on xbox360 and I can not understand what being "online" would mean.

It just means that they are playing it right now. Since most people stay logged in while playing SP Steam games, they can tell how many people are playing any given game at any given time.

In other news, I'm proud to be one of the 240k. :)

For Xbox players this would be akin to being logged into a live-account whilst playing a single player game. I regularly see what my friends are playing when I check who's online.

I believe that it's only considered "online" because you have to be connected up to Steam in order for it to play. I don't think you really get anything out of it from being online.

Not true. You only have to connect to steam once for activation and to patch. Otherwise you can chill in offline mode all you want.

Is MW3 Steam-only? If so, it would be a lot more impressive.

Is Skyrim Steam-only?

Yes, the pc version is a steamworks game.

on the PC, yes.

MW3 is Steam only.

Keep in mind that the console versions of MW3 usually has an order of magnitude more concurrent players than the PC version.

79,000 is a joke for online xbox players. There are more people in the ground war playlist than that.

Both Skyrim and MW3 can be bought as retail PC DVD versions but they both use Steamworks, so every legit retail or download PC version played will show up in the Steam statistics.

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