The Dark Ages Launch Sales and Player Metrics – WGB

DOOM: The Dark Ages has been out for over a week now if you count its paid early access period, and just over five days if you don’t. So far, the critical reception has been strong (my own review is coming) and the players seem happy, too, at least according to the Steam reviews. But based on early data, the player numbers look a little low.

UPDATE: id Software has announced that DOOM: The Dark Ages has managed to bring in 3 million players, making it the company’s biggest launch. That is apparently 7x faster than DOOM: Eternal. No sales numbers were provided.

ORIGINAL STORY: Now, before get started, this is mostly going to be speculation based on the very limited data we have available. The game’s launch on Game Pass makes it hard to determine player numbers and sales alike, so keep that in the back of your mind as we delve into the data.

First, we have Steam itself, the biggest platform for gaming on PC. DOOM; The Dark Ages is available there, but since Game Pass is also on PC we have to consider that a lot of PC players probably signed up for the subscription service instead of paying full-price. And why not when you consider Game Pass also just got The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33? That’s three awesome games for like $15. That’s an insane deal.

Anyway, back on topic. According to SteamDB, DOOM: The Dark Ages hasn’t had a strong launch week on Steam, hitting a peak concurrent player count of 31,470. That’s very weak compared to the series’ previous entry, DOOM: Eternal which managed to hit over 100k concurrent players.

But that maybe isn’t the best comparison. After all, Eternal wasn’t on Game Pass when it launched. So let’s compare it to two games that released within the last few weeks, both on Game Pass as well. First, we have The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered which brought in 216,784 concurrent players. And second, we have Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 which managed a hugely impressive 145,063. Not too shabby for a brand new IP from a small developer, eh?

Both of these games do have an advantage, though: they launched at a cheaper price than DOOM: The Dark Ages, a $70 release.

Let’s bring it some console data, too. PSNProfiles is an interesting site because it’s primarily for Trophy hunters and is opt-in, meaning it does not track every single PlayStation user in the same way that SteamDB tracks ALL Steam users. That makes PSNProfiles less precise overall, but the numbers we can grab from it are still useful in providing us a broad idea of what’s going on.

According to PSNProfiles, it lists 4,386 of its users as owning DOOM: The Dark Ages. Comparing this to DOOM: Eternal would be pointless, since that game has been out for years and has been discounted numerous times. But we can bring Expedition 33 and Oblivion back in for comparison. Both games have, of course, been out slightly longer than DOOM: The Dark Ages, but I believe are close enough to at least provide some degree of context. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is listed as having 19,130 owners, while Oblivion is sitting at 15,787. That’s a very large divide.

Over on Xbox, we can take a look at TrueAchievements, a similar site to PSNProfiles that tracks users. However, it handles its data different, essentially scanning around 2.5 million random Xbox profiles a week (a profile is only valid if it has at least one game played that week) and then uses that data to estimate how many people own a particular game. Again, then, the data is far from accurate but does give us a rough idea of trends and general success/failure.

Currently, the site is tracking DOOM: The Dark Ages at just under 100k owners. Note, this also counts people who have played it on Game Pass because as far as I am aware the website doesn’t distinguish between people who have bought the game and people who got it via subscription.

Let’s compare that again to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, while remembering both have been out for longer. Expedition 33 is at 129.2k owners. Oblivion, meanwhile, is sitting at just under 185k players.

Bringing all of this together, we can probably safely infer that DOOM: Eternal is tracking behind both Expedition 33 and Oblivion Remastered. That means it almost certainly hasn’t reached the 4m players Oblivion officially reached within the first week. As for Expedition 33, it managed to sell 2m copies in 12 days while being available on Game Pass. Based on the player numbers, DOOM: The Dark Ages appears to be lagging behind that, and is therefore presumably lagging behind it in terms of copies sold as well.

Now, we need to be fair and remember that it may have absolutely murdered on Game Pass, in which case Microsoft will still be happy as they view pure players numbers almost as much as sales these days. Or at least, that’s the vibe I get from them.

But with these numbers, I’m not confident that it has been ripping and tearing on Game Pass. And both Microsoft and id Software have been quiet regarding players numbers so far. They haven’t put out a single social media post celebrating any milestones or anything like that, which is unusual for a big first-party success because they normally want to flaunt its engagement numbers.

Hell, it makes me question if DOOM: The Dark Ages is doing worse than DOOM: Eternal, which would be a huge blow considering Eternal doubled the launch revenue of the 2016 DOOM. At the time, Bethesda was quick to announce how well Eternal was doing, whereas now they are silent.

I also noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has a much higher amount of players reaching the end of its story than DOOM: The Dark Ages does, which is surprising since The Dark Ages is a far shorter game. Based on the PlayStation Trophy data, 11.4% of players have earned the Trophy for beating the campaign. For Expedition 33, it’s 21.7%. On Trueachievements, it’s 6% (DOOM: The Dark Ages) vs 20% (Expedition 33.) On Steam, we see 15.9% (DOOM) vs 23.5% (Expedition 33.)

Hopefully we will hear some official stats from id Software, Microsoft or Bethesda soon and fingers crossed DOOM: The Dark Ages is meeting expectations or exceeding them, because I always want to see a developers work payoff. Regardless, I know I’m having a blast with the game, so I’ll get back to writing the review.