Welcome to State of the Game, a weekly series where we cover some stats for games released in weeks gone by. Today we'll have a look at the week of the 22nd to 28th of January this year which sees our very first big "release" of the year. Consequently all of the stats this week are way up when compared to the last month; the holiday period now fading into the past. Let's take a look at what's making the charts this week.
Subnautica left Early Access this week after spending some 3 years in the program. The press coverage did mean that it saw a boost in players over the next week however that quickly dwindled back down to its (admittedly still impressive) average player count. For those who were hoping that the developer may return to Natural Selection sometime soon this probably isn't the news you want to hear but it seems that Subnautica is doomed to be popular for a long time to come.
Dragonball FighterZ takes out the second spot although it appears that it might have fallen victim to the hype. The opening day player count peaked at around 44,000 players however that quickly tumbled down over the following days. It averages some 5,500 players now, still quite respectable for a fighting game on PC, but there were definitely a lot of people who only played for a short while before giving up on it completely.
The trending section is absent of sales this week, a rare occurrence by any standards. The Amnesia games were free for a short while and, interestingly the sequel saw a much greater boost than the original. This is likely due to it not being as strong of a game with many simply not bothering to play it (until now). Dream Pinball 3D shows that even the most basic games can attract a massive audience by simply adding Steam trading cards, something which may or may not be a great thing.
