ACC Playercount Round-up: February 2021

It’s March 1st, and for me that means one thing: time to reflect on ACC’s player statistics over February. Last month, I predicted a new peak concurrent player record due to the (at the time of writing) rumoured release of the British GT DLC. I also predicted it would shatter January’s numbers. Lets see if I was overly optimistic, or absolutely right!

A short TL;DR in advance:

• British GT DLC sets new peak concurrent record (6239);
• February 2021 is, once again, the biggest in terms of player activity (+8.13%)
• March 2021 will show a small decrease as we wait for what’s next!

In this series of articles I analyze the playercounts from Assetto Corsa Competizione (ACC) using data from both steamdb and steamcharts. I implement the data into my own spreadsheets, making my own easy-to-read graphics and tables.

February 2021

February started off in the same vein as January: strong with peak concurrent player counts averaging around 4500 players. During this first week, Kunos finally announced the release date of the British GT DLC (Feb. 10th, 2021). Weirdly, as with previous DLC releases, the game takes a bit of a dive in peak concurrent playercounts the day before release.

It did this with the release of the IGTC-pack (See: Feb 2020), the GT4-pack (See: July 2020) and the 2021-DLC (See: Nov. 2020). Possibly, people prefer discussing the game right before a DLC’s release over actually playing the current contents.

In the chart above this is clearly visible. Due to the chart trying to make the line round, it shows a dip just below the 4K line. The value for Feb. 9th is actually 4004, which is the lowest number of the month.

And then comes ‘the big one’, release day. With a peak of 6239 on February 10th concurrent players, the previous record of 5759 (Nov. 18th) was broken. Broken by a difference of nearly 500 players. Not quite what I had hoped for, as I speculated the British GT DLC’s release might cause a peak of 7K concurrent players in last month’s article.

As with the previous DLC releases, this peak was one day only. However, it did boost playercounts for the next two weeks over. Exactly two weeks later (Wed. 24th) another dip saw the playercount stabilize again at values seen before the British GT released, ~4500.

This ‘stabilization’ is nicely visible in figure 2 above, where the weekly averages are shown. While the first week of February (4465) is slightly below January’s average (4501). February’s second and third week however indicate a sharp increase in peak concurrent players, while the final week shows it going down towards regular values again.

This is normal and has been observed in earlier DLC releases. Number goes up, number goes down – after which the number starts slowly climbing again for a more sustainable and durable growth.

Putting the numbers into context

February 2021 amounted to an average playercount of 2115, and and average of peak playercounts of 4867. While this increase might seem a bit disappointing compared to the numbers we already have been achieving since November, keep in mind that these are numbers other racing games would die for. For comparison: Automobilista 2 has an average peak of 300, Raceroom of 1300 and rFactor 2 of 1200.

The graph above shows us that we increased our average peak with 366 players. Ofcourse, this number is inflated due to the DLC release. Had it been a regular DLC-less month, I suspect the numbers might have been equal to January’s.

The increase of 366 players amounts to a net positive change of 8.13%, as can be seen below.

Looking forward

There are no DLC releases planned for March. Sadly, there are no DLC releases announced whatsoever, as the roadmap to ACC continues to be empty. I hope, no, I believe (especially based on the more than healthy numbers in this and last month’s posts) this is due to Kunos not being allowed to, or able to, announce what they are working on yet.

I cannot reasonably believe this will be the end for ACC, as 505 Games (ACC/Kunos’ publisher) has repeatedly stated their happiness at the games’ performance. All we have to do is wait for them to state what will be next, and when that will be.

As a sidenote: there’s one thing I know that challenges their development plans: they can’t (due to Covid) physically go to the tracks to do the laserscanning needed. This was also the reason Magny Cours wasn’t included in the 2021 pack.

March will therefore be a calm month. Averages will probably remain on January’s level, perhaps slightly above it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the average is about 4600, indicating a slight dip as compared to this month, but that is okay. Healthy, even.

Hopefully, we’ll be given an insight this month in what will be next for ACC!

Previous articles

• January 2021
• 2020 Round-up
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• July 2020
• June 2020
• May 2020
• April 2020
• March 2020