Talk:List of best-selling PC games

What a mess of list

Considering the dates of the games

• First, it considers the sales from every source (for example Thexder)
• then it considers lousy source of information (for example Hydlide), that it also considers the sales of every port.
• And for this year (2020), we are considering 3 games. Fall Guy (10 million), Cyberpunk 2077 (4.5 million) and Crusader King 3 (1 million). Why Crusader King 3 where there are many games that sold more than 1 million this year?. It looks cherry picked, the same than other games of the list.

12:03, 25 December 2020 (UTC)190.46.238.9 (talk)

This list is only meant to include PC specific sales. Which is why Cyberpunk has been added, since we have a source denoting PC sales. If you have reliable PC sales information for other games, feel free to provide. It's not cherry picked, we simply can't all be omniscient. If there's games that are inappropriately sourced, by all means, we can look at remove them. -- ferret (talk) 14:19, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Thexder removed, no good. Hydlide's source may be questionable, but it's adding up PC ports to 1 million. I've left it for now, certainly can be discussed further. We don't require 1 million sales on a single specific PC platform, just that it is PC platform. -- ferret (talk) 14:28, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Improving the list

I’ve noticed that a decent chunk of the list items featured questionable and unreliable sources and I would like to help update the list to more accurate figures and have new reliable sources. I Am Hunted (talk) 16:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Check out WP:VG/S as a starting point for sources that are reliable. -- ferret (talk) 17:16, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks I’ll take a look I Am Hunted (talk) 17:38, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I’ve decided to merge cells. I moved games with the same sales figures and merged the series cells and I merged cells if the game was published and developed by the same studio. Do you this this is a good idea or not? I Am Hunted (talk) 01:39, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

2018 leaked Steam sale numbers

(Note: Should not be confused with SteamSpy) In 2018 there was a leak with Steam's API service and someone managed to extrapolate the player numbers of over 13'000 games. As Steam is a PC only platform these numbers would be of great interest for this list.

As these numbers where calculated via achievements, they are not exact. However, they are precise. The largest error margin cannot be more than ±10'000 players, in most cases less than that, which is only a nominal matter considering we deal in millions and hundred-thousands. Plus, these are low estimates as they require any individual player to have at least 1 achievement in any particular game.

Would this list be of interest for this article? Or is there something that disqualify it? https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/steam-data-leak-reveals-precise-player-count-for-thousands-of-games/ --Christoffre (talk) 19:23, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

It was discussed heavily by WP:VG at the time. It should not be used for sales figures. It is sometimes quoted, in context, as estimated figures. -- ferret (talk) 19:48, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Additional sources

https://www.eurogamer.net/how-are-segas-video-games-selling https://www.pcgamer.com/total-war-three-kingdoms-sold-a-million-copies-in-a-week/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/23/civ-vi-was-a-large-contributor-to-take-twos-net-revenue-growth/ hope this helps2601:405:4A80:B950:C4BA:540B:8A30:1436 (talk) 17:13, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-planet-zoo-i-has-surpassed-1-million-sales-in-under-six-months 2601:405:4A80:B950:8D8A:5056:E7D6:E63B (talk) 18:20, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

SteamSpy as a viable source?

So, I have a question. I played Europa Universalis IV and noticed that the numbers given for this particular title on this table is 1 million copies sold. Yet, in the Wikipedia entry for this game, the article indicated that it has two million owners as of February 2021, per the source from SteamSpy website. Should that website be trusted as a source for the information on this list?

I checked the list of sources deprecated (or blacklisted) for Wikipedia and SteamSpy is not listed, but I am uncertain about this, hence asking this question. I also searched on Wikipedia and, sure enough, there is an article on SteamSpy, which indicated that there is accuracy concerns with the data provided by the site. So... should this source be used or not? Legion (talk) 10:58, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

SteamSpy is not a reliable source. It is listed on WP:VG/S as "Steam Spy". These are estimates made from scrapping publically available data. It's unofficial and incomplete, and does not represent sales but an estimate of "Steam owners". -- ferret (talk) 13:28, 29 September 2023 (UTC)