Steam is not really a great proxy for any of this. Tower of Fantasy et al only really looks good here because MiHoYo's behemoths don't use Steam, but they have enormous playerbases, and a lot of the other big Asian F2P live service titles aren't on Steam either.
While I don't have numbers, for example, I suspect Honkai Star Rail would very likely dwarf all of these combined.
Yep, that is almost certainly true! We just don't have any data for non-Steam PC. However, it's a good comment, and I'll make sure I mention it in a follow-up.
For the vast, vast majority of PC gaming, it's a great metric because it's such a dominant platform.
It's just that F2P is a weird edge case, likely because so many of those games are behind bespoke corporate launchers. (Usually because they have anticheats so intrusive that it would make Denuvo's engineers blanche at the sight.)
It's not the only edge case; retro DOS titles are often GOG-only, and free indie titles are very much tied to itch. But it's likely the most business-significant one.
Steam is not really a great proxy for any of this. Tower of Fantasy et al only really looks good here because MiHoYo's behemoths don't use Steam, but they have enormous playerbases, and a lot of the other big Asian F2P live service titles aren't on Steam either.
While I don't have numbers, for example, I suspect Honkai Star Rail would very likely dwarf all of these combined.
Yep, that is almost certainly true! We just don't have any data for non-Steam PC. However, it's a good comment, and I'll make sure I mention it in a follow-up.
For the vast, vast majority of PC gaming, it's a great metric because it's such a dominant platform.
It's just that F2P is a weird edge case, likely because so many of those games are behind bespoke corporate launchers. (Usually because they have anticheats so intrusive that it would make Denuvo's engineers blanche at the sight.)
It's not the only edge case; retro DOS titles are often GOG-only, and free indie titles are very much tied to itch. But it's likely the most business-significant one.
What do CCU and DAU stand for? I like the article but just want sure what those two acronyms stood for.
CCU is concurrent users, and DAU is daily active users. (Sorry, we try to re-state this every time, but don't always manage it.)
Ah that makes sense. Thanks! Again nice article.