It makes me happy to see that Stardew Valley made the list!
No way this is a remotely sane comparison.
Any Tetris game released after 1988 is essentially a sequel while most of these games have no sequels to include, and even if you just dismissively wave that away, it has had almost 40 years to sell those copies.
“All-time units sold”, not “all-time units sold under certain conditions to normalize the list”
Does GTA V equate to selling one playable copy or is it because its somehow bundled with shark cards? Also how is Tetris counted, because there are multiple Tetris games. Do they count smartphone games? How fits free to play with micro transactions into this discussion? Some have a buy once for full price to unlock main game with additional optional DLCs (in example Overwatch 2 and Paladins worked like that). It’s a bit unfair to put them all in one. I also do not count built-in or bundled games like Wii Sports.
Is there any source? Just sharing an image?
Also how is Tetris counted, because there are multiple Tetris games.
I think Tetris is in its own cateory here. We’re talking about over 40 years of re-licensing the same thing to nearly every platform in existence, short of a number of 8-bit computers and consoles. And all that happened under many different publishers, sometimes multiple times on the same system. Added up, it’s no surprise that it’s in the top spot. Nothing else on this list even comes close to having numbers like that.
Meanwhile Minecraft and GTAV are closing that gap in a fraction of the time, on a fraction of as many platforms.
With a magnitude of additional potential customers.
GTA V has tapped three generations of consoles now, plus PC. I bet a lot of people have bought it twice.
It’s also been out 13 years or something and it was free to claim on EGS at some point. Wouldn’t be surprised if that counted as sales too, since Epic presumably paid them for those claims.
I know I bought it twice. Once when it came out new on Xbox 360 and later (much later) on PC.
Ah so activision (blizzard) made a game that people paid for, then replaced it with a f2p version, then added the ability to buy a bunch of the paid shit in a bundle? Can’t say that surprises me if it is the case; they made it pretty clear how out of touch they were the moment their rep asked “don’t you have phones?” as if “can I buy and play this?” was the only question any gamer had.
then replaced it with a f2p version, then added the ability to buy a bunch of the paid shit in a bundle?
The way it works or worked in Paladins and Overwatch 2 is, that the characters can be got for free by just playing the game. But you can buy the all (and future) characters lets say for 20 Euros / Dollars. It’s not really different from games you purchase for 20 Dollars, that do have free to play paid stuff in it too. So it’s not really that different from full priced games, after you purchased it.
The difference is that I did buy the first game (at a AAA price even, iirc) but then they got rid of it when they released the second one and gave a big middle finger to anyone that gave them money for the first.
Doesn’t really affect me personally, since I’d already decided to stay away from anything they offered for other reasons, but just another thing on the pile, though I hadn’t realized they then added a “oh but you can purchase the full thing again option” and thought that it worked more like DOTA2 for monetization (where all characters are free all the time and they monetize it with cosmetics and the plus subscription that gives data on the meta in game) rather than the LoL model.
This reply is actually just agreeing with you and repeating what you said. Just want to clarify this before sending the reply.
I agree with you, also purchased and played Overwatch (the first) on near launch day for thousands of hours. And is actually my favorite multiplayer gamer of the decade; not joking. I know exactly about the middle finger. My point was not defending that point, but the equivalency to full priced games. The disaster launch of the “successor” and so on is a different story for fans of the original game.
But there are better ways to handle this. Good examples are the Valve games as you pointed out with DOTA 2 (and Team Fortress 2). Or Marvel Rivals (which I play), where all characters are available by default. LOL of course is on the complete other end of the spectrum, where you pay for each character and they aren’t even cheap and there are so many of them.
Yeah, I agree that, as far as f2p monetization models go, neither approach is bad on its own. I even liked the LoL one as I found it helped limit the choices right now so I didn’t have to pick out of like 100 characters, while still allowing for getting ones you liked, for free even if you were patient (and I was). HotS used the same model iirc.
But Blizzard displayed unbridled greed and contempt for their users for how they handled that. It really should have led to a landmark case regarding consumer rights when purchasing a license to play a video game and rules for clauses like “we can change this agreement whenever we want”.
deleted by creator
Overwatch ranks in the top 15 and that still wasn’t good enough for Blizzard to not chase out all their good devs because the numbers weren’t as high as they promised their shareholders.
While blizzare is known for being a shitass company, readjng that some suit told Jeff Kaplan out of nowhere that overwatch needs to generate x million dollars by the end of the quarter or they are gonna fire 2000 people and it’s gonna be on him. It left such a disgusting taste in my mouth.
Didn’t Minecraft overtake Tetris years ago?
I’m pleasantly surprised to see Human Fall Flat here though. I don’t hear many people talk about it, but it has a seriously fun multiplayer
If they counted all Pokémon game as one like the Tetris it was on the 2nd or 3rd place (at around 340m according to wikipedia).
My problem with those stats is that with “Tetris” they always count every iteration of it
If we’re going by THAT metric, Pokémon would top this list hahaha
If you’re going to include pack ins like Wii Sports then Windows Solitaire and Minesweeper smoke everything…
Why they put a character of overwatch but not one of Terraria, which has sold more, was made by some passionate team and it’s still very much loved by the community?
Tetris really, truly shouldn’t appear at the top of any best-selling games list. The only reason it does is because every installment of Tetris is still counted as just being Tetris for some reason.
To be fair, every installment of Tetris kinda is just Tetris /hj
Not really. They are developed independently, marketed and produced, sold independently to different times since its inception. Counting them all as a single game is wrong in my opinion. It’s like counting every Tennis game as the same game, because they all try to realize the same genre.
I’ve literally never heard of “Human Fall Flat” before seeing this image
From what I interpret off the Wikipedia page, it had sold single digit millions by COVID and then went viral in China during COVID and that’s how it ended up selling tens of millions more
Fascinating!
I’d be interested in seeing a list that was adjusted for the “number of gamers” at the time. A game selling a million copies today isn’t the same level of accomplishment as selling a million copies in 1985 when there was a smaller global market.
Very fun multiplayer game. My son and I love it. I’m surprised of the sales count too though. I didn’t expect it to be that high.
I honesty thought it was more of a streamer game. Had no idea it sold that much.
I played it with my daughter and called it the flobby Bobby game.
Me neither. And I… have it on Steam, apparently?
Not a good chart. They mix franchises and titles in the same chart which is a strange choice. Mario Kart 8 certainly did not sell that much, seeing as there are only 13 million Wii U’s. They meant Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for Switch.
They also got the wrong logo for Super Mario Bros, somehow. It’s the New Super Mario Bros. logo but with the “New” cut out.e: I was wrong about the SMB logo, it did look like that ingame, just not on the box art.
At that point, it’s combining SKUs of what they consider to be the main “game”. Non-deluxe Mario Kart 8 is a rounding error. Tetris gets really weird to count.
Visual capitalist is a slop media creation. Content and traffic are absolute, actual real data be damned.
Don’t know about the numbers but Mario Kart 8 is for switch.
Mario Kart 8 is a Wii U game that was later ported to Switch under the name Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
The number looks like they added the sales numbers for both together, which I think makes sense. It’s expanded but not a new game.
The more you know… thanks. My bad.
Isn’t pubg free?
Not at launch; it became free-to-play later.
Mobile is but there are micro transactions everywhere. They likely make a shit ton of money off that because people are stupid.
Ugh PUBG was one of the best games ever when it came out for computer. Full of jank, sure, but every time you started a new game, it was an ADVENTURE! I always landed far away from people so I could get max exploring in. I loved that there were tons of garbage items on the floor, like clothing and stuff. It made every time you found a nice gun or attachment feel AWESOME. Then as the round is further in, I’m armed to the teeth and driving a bike with a sidecar towards the action. Then I hit a twig and my bike launches into orbit, doing 500 flips, exploding on impact. Except the time it didn’t—I was driving and my partner was in the sidecar, we launched and did a million flips, and it landed without so much as a bounce (doing damage to us and lighting on fire, but not killing us!) I wish I had a clip from that moment, with our reactions.
Then PUBG mobile came out, and a friend of mine was sooo into it, and soooo stoked that he got so many kills and was so good at the game. I’m not a teen anymore so I’m not a fun-ruiner like I was back then; I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was playing against majority boys with bad AI, and the game has crazy auto aim for players.
The computer version removed all bad loot, so everything you find was guns, ammo, attachments… suddenly everything was inundated with loot. If I wanted that, I’d just go play a game with load outs! I want to have to hunt for good gear, that’s what made the game so unique for me!
Then PUBG went full on garbage mode. Removed proxy-chat, went F2P, and added bots. Fuck bots! Ruins the concept of the game completely. I uninstalled the day bots were added and never played again.
I am very happy to have had a few 1v99 wins before bots were added. My first win against 99 others happened maybe 50 hours in, and my watch warned me my heart rate hit 180. I’ve never felt that kind of rush from a game before or since.
Early PUBG with a stack of friends - GOAT game
Early PUBG was one of the best gaming experiences of my life. Totally agree, they took what was great and enshittified it massively but still made way more money from micro transactions (by having a massively expanded player base for being free and accessible).
My goat is socom 2 though. That game rocked the entire time.
Like it, or not, Minecraft has real staying power. Kids around the world are going to relate to things to Minecraft forever, now.
Dude I played Minecraft as a teenager and now my kids play Minecraft with minimal encouragement by us. It’s got hella staying power
Why would anyone not like it? Minecraft is great.
I never played Minecraft before, with one exception last year. I was trying out the PS3 emulator on my PC and tested Minecraft (offline) on it. I can see why people like it. Its pretty cool game and wish I was more into it.
It’s almost more of a system than a game, like you can play many games within it.
I used to just jump into a survival world and start exploring. Now I’ve got a persistent world I’ve had for like eight years. Sometimes I’m still discovering new areas, but other times I’m rediscovering stuff that I (or my friend who plays in the same world) built long ago. Occasionally I’ll take on some huge impressive project. The rail system in my world is built out to an unreasonable level.
I love the idea of it but literally struggle to play it with my child I can’t stand builder games rather be playing Lego’s at that point.
But I still do it because she loves it.
You should take a look at fantasy modpacks, less building and more exploring, you can basically transform the game into an rpg.
Good on you for your sacrifice. Might come across as sarcastic but I mean it, so many parents won’t engage in activities their kids enjoy because the parent just finds it too boring and next thing you know there’s nothing for them to connect over and they both feel the other is distant and uninterested in them as a person
Fortnite Lego is pretty solid
