ACC player counts in review: August & September 2022

Time flies when you’re having fun. Last month I skipped out on writing the monthly recap due to a long vacation in Italy. And, now that it is October, it is time to look back on not just one, but two months of ACCs player statistics.

In this series of articles – I’ve been doing this since March 2020 – I analyze the playercounts from Assetto Corsa Competizione (ACC) using data from both steamdb and steamcharts. I implement the data into my own spreadsheets, creating my own graphics and tables.

A short TL;DR in advance:

• August saw peak player counts drop down to 3895, with the lowest peaks coinciding with a heatwave
• September recovered to 4208, starting the annual post-summer recovery as outside temperatures drop
• October may show a similar rise if historical data is to be believed, up to around 4500.

August 2022: comparing daily ACC player counts

Before we head into this month’s numbers, let’s first recap July 2022 to give it some context. July 2022 saw a daily average of 4122 simracers playing ACC concurrently on peak hours, down from 4450 in June. This was likely due to the summer heat flushing players out of their sim rigs and into less physically intense hobbies. In last month’s recap, I predicted the average could dip down to a low of 3900.

Enough recap. We’ve got two months’ worth of data to go through. Let us start with August!

August was a very stable month in terms of peak concurrent player counts. Its lowest scores were scored on Friday 12th (3365) and Saturday 13th (3280), which coincided with record heat in large parts of the UK and north-western Europe. August’s highest was achieved on Monday 1st (4602), a number the game wasn’t even close to achieving until the very end of the month as Monday 29th had 4323 peak concurrent players.

The graph above shows all of the peak concurrent player counts for ACC in 2022. The July 19th negative peak is clearly the lowest peak concurrent player count achieved this year so far.

Despite these low numbers, one thing is important to note: the trendline shows general stability, as it only very slightly denotes a downward trend.

August’s average amounted to just 3895 concurrent players, the lowest since October 2021 (3800). Compared to July, this is a decrease of 5.51% (figure 2, bottom left) or 227 players (figure 3, bottom right)

Looking at the weekly averages (figure 4, below), the first and second week of August were respectively its best (4017) and worst (3725), with the subsequent weeks showing stability at 3899 and 3844 on average. Interestingly, these weekly averages seem to head into a collision course with last year’s weekly averages. Will that happen in September? Lets see!

September 2022: comparing daily ACC player counts

Historically speaking, September has always been a month of growth. 11.2% in 2020, and 7.8% in 2021. I’m happy to say that 2022 is no different in this regard.

September started out tentatively, with similar numbers to August. However, halfway through the month, the numbers started rising, sticking above the 4K-line for nearly 3 weeks.

September’s lowest was achieved on Saturday 10th (3684), whereas the highest peak concurrent player count was achieved on Sunday 25th (4856), with Monday 19th (4845) and Sunday 18th (4838) very close behind.

With the second part of the month improving the average concurrent player count, the trendline sees a rise from just above 4K to just below 4.5K. And, more importantly – it was just about able to stay above 2021’s numbers as seen below in figure 6.

Talk about a close call…

On average, September 2022 achieved 4208 peak concurrent players – an increase over August by 313 (8%) players. Like all previous Septembers, this one is yet another one showing growth instead of decline. For more info, you can see figures 6 and 7 below.

August & September 2022 Summary and looking ahead

With August 2022 beyond us, and September 2022 turning the curve upwards, it seems to me that 2022s summer is officially over. With August dipping down from 4122 to 3895, but with September returning to 4208, the game is once again growing in activity as can be seen above in figure 8.

It will be interesting to see whether the game will have similar growth patterns like it did in the fall of 2020 and 2021. I do maintain that it is possible that we will not be able to top last year’s numbers at some point, and while the weekly average was able to just keep above 2021s average, this point could very well be reached by the end of this year.

For now at least, we seem to be trending upwards again, even though the general yearly trend still shows a steep decline as can ben seen in figure 9 above. But who knows what the coming month(s) will bring.

I could make a prediction though. An average peak of 4500 could certainly be within the realm of possibilities.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Overview & Previous Articles

• September 2022 (avg. 4208, +8.04%)
• August 2022 (avg. 3895, -5.51%)
• July 2022 (avg. 4122, -7.37%)
• June 2022 (avg. 4450, -13.79%)
• May 2022 (avg. 5168, -4.65%)
• April 2022 (avg. 5420, +11.98%)
• March 2022 (avg. 4840, -5.12%)
• February 2022 (avg. 5101, -5.4%)
• January 2022 (avg. 5391, +17.2%)
• 2021 Round-up
• December 2021 (avg. 4595, +9.1%)
• November 2021 (avg. 4212, +10.8%)
• October 2021 (avg. 3800, -1.0%)
• September 2021 (avg. 3839, + 7.8%)
• August 2021 (avg. 3560, +4.3%)
• July 2021 (avg. 3412, -20.6%)
• June 2021 (avg. 4296, -11.4%)
• May 2021 (avg. 4849, +3.0%)
• April 2021 (avg. 4709, +3.2%)
• March 2021 (avg. 4565, -6.2%)
• February 2021 (avg. 4867, +8.1%)
• January 2021 (avg. 4501, +12.0%)
• 2020 Round-up
• December 2020 (avg. 4018, -6.9%)
• November 2020 (avg. 4314, +34.0%)
• October 2020 (avg. 3220, +7.9%)
• September 2020 (avg. 2985, +11.1%)
• August 2020 (avg. 2685, -19.0%)
• July 2020 (avg. 3316, +9.8%)
• June 2020 (avg. 3021, -8.5%)
• May 2020 (avg. 3301, +15.4%)
• April 2020 (avg. 2860, +30.6%)
• March 2020 (avg. 2190, +1.4%)

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