

Skyim breaking Steam record -- a singleplayer game has 240,000 users online - alexanderswang
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Almost twice the former record keeper -- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, released in 2009
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cjdavis
Wow, Counter-Strike is still number three, over ELEVEN years after release?!

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aw3c2
It has been developed and revamped over time. Counter-Strike today has not
much to do with the original HL mod.

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Auguste
The original Counter-Strike is no longer actively developed is it? Yet,
surprisingly, it seems to be ahead of Counter-Strike Source, the newest
addition.

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redthrowaway
CS:S has higher requirements, and the gameplay changes pissed off a lot of the
hardcore CS crowd. I know people who still kvetch about Valve nerfing deagle-
hopping.

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easp
That'd be "Skyrim"

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alexanderswang
Sorry for that...

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runningdogx
I didn't know what skyrim was, beyond a vague awareness that it was a game, so
I went to elderscrolls.com, only to encounter a flash-wrapped video with _no
volume control_.

I see this particular usability faux pas way too often. If you roll your own
flash video player rather than host videos elsewhere or use one of the
mainstream well-designed open/commercial flash video player apps, _let viewers
control the volume_.

Binary On/Off sound toggles on flash apps are ridiculous. Furthermore, a
custom flash video player app should remember the volume setting (per-domain)
so viewers don't have to monkey with the volume every time that flash app
appears.

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shinratdr
Anyone that picky about a Flash video would know perfectly well that an
"official website" is the last, least useful place to look for information on
a topic.

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BauerUK
If it weren't for those damn spiders, it'd probably be double that number.

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pearle
Those are great numbers for PC gaming. I wonder what the ratio is for playing
vs. bought.

Todd Howard, the game director at Bethesda Game Studios, has recently claimed
that consoles make up about 90% of their overall game sales. If this is still
true for Skyrim it means this game likely has massive sales #s for a single
player RPG, or any other game for that matter.

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daenz
what's trippy to me is how smooth and recognizable that cosine wave is

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wmobit
No, it's totally a sine wave.

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ovi256
Yes, those pesky dudes who see a cosine are +pi/2 heretics and should be
burned at the stake.

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teamonkey
Is that really a Steam record? The table shows the number of people who are
playing NOW and the peak in the last 24 hours.

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mrud
It seems so at least according to <http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php>

For a chart with these numbers have a look at
[http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php?action=graph&...](http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php?action=graph&appid=72850q10q440q42690&jstime=1&from=1296518400000&to=)

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magicalist
I don't think those are quite correct...for instance, today's peak counter
strike player count is only 6000 fewer players than the "all time" peak count
on that site. Counter strike players are stubborn, but not that stubborn.

If you go to the graph screen, the graph only goes back to mid march 2011 and
won't go back any farther, no matter how far back you request. It probably
began gathering stats then.

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andrewfelix
On the subject of Steam can someone answer this question for me regarding
Steam's pricing...<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3229558> I used to get
around the problem in my country by using a VPN, but that no longer seems to
work/

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Derbasti
Use Entropay to pay. Use store.steampowered.com/?cc=us and a browser and a VPN
and a US steam account to buy, then gift it to your actual account. Works like
a charm.

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navs
I was surprised to find people still go for the single player RPG genre. I've
been playing Skyrim after its midnight release here in New Zealand.

On another note, I've also noticed the Mac App Store is selling the new Batman
Game. Is the Mac App Store a viable competitor to Steam?

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stricken
That doesn't sound right, Batman: Arkham City isn't out on PC yet. Do you mean
the old one, Arkham Asylum?

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navs
My apologies, you're right. It's Arkham Asylum.

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dfc
What does "online" mean when talking about a single player game?

I am thinking about playing oblivion on xbox360 and I can not understand what
being "online" would mean.

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jamesaguilar
It just means that they are playing it right now. Since most people stay
logged in while playing SP Steam games, they can tell how many people are
playing any given game at any given time.

In other news, I'm proud to be one of the 240k. :)

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electromagnetic
For Xbox players this would be akin to being logged into a live-account whilst
playing a single player game. I regularly see what my friends are playing when
I check who's online.

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TobbenTM
Is MW3 Steam-only? If so, it would be a lot more impressive.

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sliverstorm
Is Skyrim Steam-only?

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chris11
Yes, the pc version is a steamworks game.

