Terraria’s popularity on Steam just went through the roof.
Sometimes you take one look at the increase of game’s Steam stats – like the bump in Fallout 3/New Vegas numbers when Fallout 4 was announced – and you instantly know what’s caused it. “Yep,” you’ll say to yourself* confidently, “I know why that happened.”
Other times, you’ll be left scratching your head**. Today was one such day.
I hopped onto steamcharts.com just now, as I’m wont to do from time to time – particularly in slow news and release periods, like the post-E3 lull – to see if there are any prevalent trends worth commenting on. You know, CS:GO beating half a million concurrent users, DOTA 2 having more concurrent players than people on the planet, that sort of thing.
But Terraria?
It’s a cute game. It’s varied and fun. Crafting, exploring, battling, treasure-hunting, platforming, sandboxing, building – and you can play it with friends too – Terraria is generally a rollicking good time.
But to see Terraria leap to third place in the concurrent Steam usage numbers on a weeknight? To put that in perspective, it’s jumped ahead of Grand Theft Auto V, Civilisation V, and even free Valve favourite Team Fortress 2 – leaving only the aforementioned CS:GO and DOTA 2 above it – which is a bloody remarkable increase.
And when I say remarkable, Terraria has jumped from a peak player figure of around 15,000, to a massive 158,947. That’s a 1000% increase.
One. Thousand. Percent.
Holy shit!
Terraria is on sale, which always helps. Sales and Steam go together like bacon and maple syrup, but for a game that only costs £6.99 to begin with, 25% off isn’t exactly a massive reduction. That’s down to £5.24. It’s hardly a blowout, is it?
I must confess I was feeling a bit stumped, until I spotted the latest update on Terraria’s Steam page:
Recent updates
30 June
It Has Begun! – Terraria 1.3 Launches Today!
Happy Terraria 1.3 Launch Day everyone!!!
It has been a long road – one full of sleepless nights and tiring nights, laughter and tears, successes and setbacks – but the time has finally come for us to turn our labor of love for the past year or so over to you, our loyal fans. Terraria 1.3 touches on many aspects of the game – from re-imagined sprites and backgrounds to new features and – of course – the new content that you crave – that we truly feel it refreshes and revitalizes the entire Terraria experience. We are confident that you will enjoy what it has to offer!
And just to clarify, Terraria offers free updates, for all users, forever. It may seem like a silly, insignificant game, but there’s an abject lesson to all developers and publishers about customer loyalty: If you build it (and it is free) then they will come.
* You probably won’t say that to yourself, because you’re not sad, dull person like me.
** Ditto this one. I really must get out more.
