ACC player counts in review: June & July 2023

Even though I try to post my monthly review of Assetto Corsa Competizione’s (ACC) player statistics each month as soon as the month is done with, there’s always that pesky summer holiday. A summer holiday that often forces me to skip a month, only to bundle it with the next month’s review. So to for this June, which I spent in a blistering hot Mexico.

As for heat: traditionally it puts a damper on ACC’s player statistics. By the end of July 2021, ACC had lost 30% of its daily player base compared to May 2021. In 2022, it lost ‘just’ 20% compared to May 2022, but if measuring the decline from April to August, it still comes to a decline of 28%.

Based on these numbers, how did 2023’s summer months fare? Lets find out!

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 steamdb. I implement the data into my own spreadsheets, creating my own graphics and tables.

A short TL;DR in advance:

  • ACC’s summers are normally marked by low activity, and this year is no different
  • Poor temperatures in Western Europe might have lessened the effect in July, as activity slightly increased
  • ACC is performing much stronger than the same time last year, meaning we have not peaked yet.

Table of contents

  1. Looking back: May 2023
  2. June 2023: comparing daily ACC player counts
  3. July 2023: comparing daily ACC player counts
  4. June & July 2023: comparing weekly ACC player counts
  5. June & July 2023: comparing monthly ACC player counts
  6. Looking forward to next month: August 2023

Looking back: May 2023

Before we do, though, let us look back at April’s record-setting numbers by looking at the TL;DR of the May 2023’s review:

  • May was still a very strong month, despite a near 5% decrease in peak activity and 8% in average, non-peak activity
  • It still lists, historically, as 3rd and 4th in the respective categories on the all-time list
  • Next month will traditionally see the biggest decline in player activity – so brace yourselves for summer!

May was a very strong month, despite a slight decline in activity. At the time, it was not yet clear if the decline was due to a natural decay after multiple content additions, or if it was the start of the traditional Summer decline.

Whatever it was, it was reason for Jardier to release an alarmist video about the decline of players in ACC, claiming that ACC was dying. A video that he has since delisted. This gave me a good chuckle, since as we know: ACC is still healthy as ever.

June 2023: comparing daily ACC player counts

Fig. 1: Peak concurrent (red) and average (grey) player counts

While May had an average of 5400, its final 2 weeks had an average of about 5200. Conversely, this means the other half of the month had an average of 5600 showing a negative trend that the first few weeks of June continued.

With only a few (2) peaks above the 5K line, and both of them being in the first 5 days of the month, there’s no denying a negative trend has formed. But it is not as bad as expected, with the trendline holding at ~4400 by the end of the month. This is mostly due to the second part of the month. holding remarkably steady.

June’s highest peak concurrent player count (5370) was achieved on Sunday, June 4th, whereas the lowest value was on Saturday, June 10th. As you remember, the 24H of Le Mans was run between June 10th and 11th, meaning that a lot of you tuned into the race in the evening instead of manning your battle stations.

In terms of average (non-peak) daily player activity, we can once again discern peaks during the weekends – especially so during the last weekend of June. This weekend also marked the start of the Steam Summer Sale. This might have played a small role in the increased activity during that weekend.

July 2023: comparing daily ACC player counts

Fig. 2: Peak concurrent (red) and average (grey) player counts

Moving on to July, we see a pretty similar graph to the one in June. Interestingly, July’s highest peak concurrent player activity was on Sunday 2nd, which is right after the 24H of Spa finished. And while the 24H of Le Mans caused a dip to 3600, the 24H of Spa’s Saturday night still managed to bring in 4045 concurrent players – who probably were all largely driving around Spa themselves.

This month, again, has a negative trendline with the start of the month scoring stronger than the latter part of the month. However, just like in June, the trendline trends from ~4600 to ~4400, meaning that the start of July was stronger than the start of June. This is already an early indicator that the so-called ‘summer decline’ has already stabilized.

This is probably helped by the rather poor summer Western Europe has been having so far. By contrast, the 2nd weekend of the month (7 to 9th of July) scored lowest both in the peak and non-peak averages as the weather was best, with 3936 players clocking in during peak hours on Saturday 8th.

The end of the summer decline can also be seen in figure 3 below;

Fig. 3: Combined peak concurrent (red) and average (grey) player counts of 2023

Since the Le Mans weekend, which can clearly be seen by its negative peak, the red and grey lines have kept a pretty consistent pattern so far, with only the past week deviating from it somewhat. But, perhaps this would become more clear if would look at the weekly stats, as continued below!

June & July 2023: comparing weekly ACC player counts

Fig. 4: Weekly average concurrent player counts for 2023 so far.

While these weekly averages don’t show anything new, it does make it easier to see larger trends. And the trend we can spot for the past 2 months is that while it is a lot lower than in May before them, it is also very stable. The difference between the lowest and highest weeks (variance) over the past 8 weeks is just 354.

This also better shows the lack of decline since the end of May/start of June. This is a break with tradition, as in previous years June and July showed a gradual, continued decline. As can be seen in figure 5 below.

Fig. 5: Weekly average peak concurrent player counts for 2023 so far (red) compared to 2022 (white) and 2021 (grey).

Especially the last few weeks of July show a sizeable gap compared to the weekly averages from 2022, and even more so to the ones from 2021.

But, how do those numbers stack up on a monthly basis? Find out in the next paragraph!

June & July 2023: comparing monthly ACC player counts

Fig. 6: All-time peak and average player counts

As was expected, there was a substantial decline in June compared to May. With 4454, June lost almost 900 average peak concurrent players. But, on the other hand, this was within the realm of the expected. As I wrote in May: an average of around 4500 was logical given the circumstances. May itself showed that the rise in popularity following the DLC release was already waning. This decline, compounded with summer, caused this decline.

What I did not expect, however, was for July to show signs of recovery already.

With an average of 4492 it is not a decrease but a slight increase in player activity during peak hours. Below are a number of graphs that put this in context.

Fig. 7: Relative growth since January 2020
Fig. 9: Relative growth since January 2020 grouped by month
Fig. 8: Absolute growth since January 2020
Fig. 10: Absolute growth since January 2020 grouped by month

In Figure 7 you can see that in June ACC lost 17.86% of its concurrent players (its 3rd biggest loss ever). However, this comes off the back of two large increases in concurrent players, in January 2023 and April 2023, with relatively stable numbers in between. In Figure 9, you can see that this percentage is bigger compared to the past.

And yes, the loss of 968 concurrent players is the largest single-month loss in absolute numbers ever for ACC, but let’s focus on the relative numbers for now.

In July, ACC achieved a net growth of 0.92%. This isn’t that much, but compared to the net loss of past years (-7.37% in 2022 and a whopping -20.58% in 2021) it is a big break with the historical trend.

If we overlay the average peak concurrent numbers from the past 4 years of data in a line graph instead, it becomes clearer to see that even though the year started with lower activity than the start of 2022, it has since surpassed it. Especially now, in July 2023, it has started to deviate from the data set by July 2022 due to last month’s slight increase in concurrent activity.

Fig. 11: monthly peak averages compared

As I said at the start of this article, ACC lost 30% of its userbase in June & July of 2021. It lost 20% in the same period in 2022. Now, in 2023, it has lost ‘just’ 17% of its player base compared to May.

This deviation from the historical trend also means that the year-on-year monthly peak average is starting to climb again, as the difference between the July’s means an increase of 31 to the YoY average (fig. 12). If August is able to keep this number up, we will most likely have a new YoY-average record, surpassing the 4675 set between December 2021 and November 2022.

Fig. 12: 12-month running average of peak concurrent player counts

Looking forward to next month: August 2023

This current trend break is interesting. If the weather in Western Europe reaches regular summer temperatures, the player activity might very well take another dive again. Or it might not take a dive at all despite the weather, in which case ACC has truly grown compared to 2022.

If not, this would send a big signal to 505 Games and Kunos in regards to the future of ACC.

I expect either of 2 things: either a slight decline of ~100 to ~4400, or a big decline with ~500 taking us below 4K. And I think this largely depends on, yes, the weather.

As far as future content goes, there is only the anticipated GT2 DLC release remaining before the devs allegedly move their sights on the successor to the main series Assetto Corsa 2.

Kunos’ license deal with SRO is rumoured to run out. This is also rumoured to cause Kunos to open up the code for ACC to modders. This could result in a number of things happening to ACC. Both good and bad.

At this point, there’s no point in speculating on what will happen in the distant future. What’s important is that we have fun with the game now, as it is in our install folders. And the data seems to suggest that we are!

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

Overview & Previous Articles

2023

2022

2021

2020

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