War Thunder Is Having One Heck of a Year
War Thunder has tripled in Steam concurrents since 2020. How does that compare to its competition?
On the Military Simulators 🎖
Despite being a huge fan of Microsoft Flight Simulator, I won’t pretend to understand the fervor behind military simulators. I will readily admit, however, of failing to have a full view of the actual landscape.
If you had asked me to name the most popular games in the space I probably would have named World of Warships and World of Tanks before I named War Thunder. While Steam numbers alone may seemingly refute that gut judgment, it’s important to note that all of these games can also be purchased directly from the developer, which doesn’t count towards Steam numbers.
(Yes, War Thunder is the one which has had three separate leaks of classified documents).
Put together, in the last week, all three of Wargaming Group’s games peaked at a total of 14,000 concurrent Steam players. War Thunder alone hit an all time peak of almost 82,000 concurrent on Monday.
That isn’t the full story, however. While War Thunder usually averages four-digit Twitch view counts, World of Warships hovers around 15,000 and World of Tanks around 45,000. It’s safe to say that most players are still utilizing standalone clients and we’ll have to rely on official number releases which are few and far between.
The best we have at the moment is from May 2019, when the general manager of Lesta Studio claimed that Warships had exceeded 1,000,000 monthly active users.
It doesn’t make the growth of War Thunder any less impressive, however. The game started climbing in 2020 like a lot of other live service titles thanks to the pandemic, and did a pretty good job continuing that into 2021.
March of this year, however, was a huge boon. That giant spike is at least partially thanks to the Wind of Change update, the first of 2022, which brought with it new high resolution texture packs for both the environments and equipment. Something much needed for a game that’s now ten years old.
Updates throughout the summer did a fair job of maintaining the player base before last week’s Fire and Ice update which finally added flamethrowers. It’s not a whole lot, but it is flashy and seems to have garnered attention in the genre.
Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how the game continues to grow, despite the fact that the game was just shut down in China.
Where’s the Top Five this week? For now I’m going to set it aside in favor of random in depth dives like I have been doing. I’ll still link it here for you to though!
Five New Games 🆕
Star Ocean: The Divine Force (#25)
After more than five years, Star Ocean has finally returned. What’s new? According to the very first words in the About Game Section:
[Fly Around Areas Freely] In STAR OCEAN THE DIVINE FORCE, characters can freely move in 360° degrees and roam the skies.
[Move and explore freely in three dimensions: everything you see can be explored!]
I could not tell you the first thing about this game or the series, but hey, if you missed there’s a new one out, now you know!
Resident Evil Village - Winter’s Expansion (#26)
If you loved Resident Evil Village and want more, there’s something new to experience. Play as Ethan’s daughter Rose as she figures out her powers and do so in the more classic third person perspective.
Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander (#50)
There’s a real market for space games, huh? A few weeks back we talked about Stardeus, a RimWorld meets Factorio game. Cosmoteer is basically Factorio in space but with both machinery and humans doing your bidding as you design a spaceship and explore the universe.
SIGNALIS (#62)
I have heard so many good things about SIGNALIS. A lot of folks seem to think it’s a sleeper game of the year pick like Citizen Sleeper was. I have no idea what it’s about and I plan to keep it that way until I can dive in myself. Here’s the description:
A classic survival horror experience set in a dystopian future where humanity has uncovered a dark secret. Unravel a cosmic mystery, escape terrifying creatures, and scavenge an off-world government facility as Elster, a technician Replika searching for her lost dreams.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure (#54)
And finally, a PlayStation exclusive comes to Steam.
The Movers 🆙
ICYMI: Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord has officially released and is no longer in early access.
+68 Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
+60 Stellaris
+60 Days Gone
+59 Project Zomboid
+56 Call of Duty Endowment (CODE) - Protector Pack
In Danger âš¡
For now this section will highlight games that have been in the Top 100 for at least ten weeks and are in danger of dropping off. In next week’s newsletter, I’ll let you know if any failed to hold on.
World of Warships (#98) - 17 Weeks
Microsoft Flight Simulator Game of the Year Edition (#92) - 48 Weeks
Sea of Thieves (#87) - 126 Weeks
Ready or Not (#84) - 46 Weeks
Total War: WARHAMMER III (#76) - 14 Weeks
Longest Lasting ⌛
Sorry about the lack of links, Substack yelled at me for getting too close to the email size limit. See y’all next week!
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (534 Weeks)
Warframe (501 Weeks)
Grand Theft Auto V (407 Weeks)
The Elder Scrolls Online (406 Weeks)
Rust (384 Weeks)
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (363 Weeks)
Final Fantasy XIV Online (309 Weeks)
Dead by Daylight (286 Weeks)
Destiny 2 (173 Weeks)
Red Dead Redemption 2 (152 Weeks)