ACC player counts in review: December 2022

Happy New Year! I hope you are not as hungover as I am right now. But, despite my alcohol consumption last night, duty calls. And my duty is to bring you the latest in Assetto Corsa Competizione (ACC) player statistics. And we’ll do just that now, for December 2022!

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:

  • Infinite growth does not exist, and it might look as if ACC has hit its limit for growth
  • Some small victories have to be celebrated, but we are now on a year-on-year decline in player activity
  • Christmas, as always, put a further dent in an otherwise stagnating player activity.

December 2022: comparing daily ACC player counts

But, before we do dive into December’s numbers, let’s quickly recap where we left off in November (2022), which’ TL;DR is posted below;

  • November ended the way it started, with a negligible (negative) growth
  • Previous November months showed strong growth historically, breaking a trend
  • Year-on-year growth is slowly approaching negative numbers, but is still up 5%.

So, November saw a slight decline in player activity over October. But, the average of 4.443 peak concurrent players was still higher than 2021’s November average. Have we been able to keep this up, and will December 2022 surpass December 2021? Or will we finally reach the end of year-on-year growth?

In order to keep the year-on-year growth, this month needed the beat December 2021’s average of 4595. Quite a tall order.

Fig. 1: Peak concurrent player counts

And, as you can probably immediately tell from first glance of the graph above, this proved not to be the case.

While the month did start rather strong, with a peak of 4798 on Sunday December 4th. Unfortunately, that proved to be the highest peak of December.

By December 9th, the peak dropped to 3663. December 13th and 14th went even lower with 3608 and 3580 respectively. And we still had Christmas to come.

Oh Christmas.

Similar to 2021, about 25% of players decided to spend their time more wisely, i.e. with their family. This resulted in the lowest player activity of December 2022 on Christmas Eve, with just 3129 players clocking in hours concurrently during peak hours.

Fig. 2: Average player count

How Christmas derails normal player activity is perhaps better exemplified by using the average daily player count. Those first 3 peaks are weekends, people play a lot more over weekends. But, those are not necessarily reflected in the peak concurrent player counts, as they do so more spread out during the day. So, not only are people not playing during Christmas dinner, they aren’t playing as much as they would on a normal weekend.

People are not just eating their Christmas dinner only to dive back into their rig which they said they only spent a couple of hundred Euros or Dollars on.

But, I’m trailing off. Let’s go back to the numbers. Highest 4798, lowest 3129. Variance? 4798 – 3129 = 1669. Over 500 higher than regular. Which is huge (34%) but due to Christmas being an outlier, it doesn’t really count in my book.

Figure 3: Daily peak concurrent player counts for 2022

Christmas Eve’s 3129 peak concurrent player is, as the graph above proves, actually the lowest the peak has been all year. The last time the peak was so low? December 24th, 2021 with 3126. And yes, that was last year’s Christmas Eve.

December 2022: comparing weekly ACC player counts

Fig. 4: Weekly average concurrent player counts.

December had 4 weeks to take an average from;

  • Nov 28 – Dec 4: 4271
  • Dec 5 – Dec 11: 4240
  • Dec 12 – Dec 18: 4163
  • Dec 19 – Dec 25: 3838

Due to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day both closing out the 4th week of the month, the average of the week is taken down to 3838. Which is still not the lowest average we had this year (week 36 had 3675 on average).

However, despite this small victory, Figure 4 painfully displays the fact that we are now on a negative year-on-year growth. I.e. a net decline in player counts over December 2021.

But, to be fair, December 2021 was boosted by the late-November release of the BMW M4 GT3 as a free update. And we did not get such an update this year.

December 2022: comparing monthly ACC player counts

Fig. 5: All-time peak and average player counts

December’s average of 4098 breaks the trend of December growth we’ve had ever since the game’s official release 2019. Despite the decline in peak concurrent player counts, the average player count actually grew compared to last month.

And, while the peak concurrent player count certainly is a flashy, interesting number, the average player count is what actually is most important as it indicates how much ACC is played at any given time of day.

Right? Right?!

Despite this yet another small victory, the peak player count still dropped 345 players, or 7.77%, as you can see in the histograms below.

Fig. 6: Relative growth since January 2020
Fig. 7: Absolute growth since January 2020

Year on year, this means a decline of 497 players, or, a loss of 10.8% year-on-year. And this year-on-year gap will most likely widen for the foreseeable future. But that is a story for another time.

Looking forward to 2023! Or… not?

And that’s a wrap for December, and equally a wrap for 2022. Normally, I would take this space to look forward to the next month. However, I will keep my thoughts on the future of ACC for the annual yearly round-up. Keep an eye out on this page to stay up to date.

What are your thoughts on the future? Let me know in the comments below!

Overview & Previous Articles

2022

2021

2020

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