ACC Playercounts in Review: April 2021

It’s May 1st – May Day – so that means it’s time to review the player numbers for the past month: April (2021). In last month’s post I wrote that I thought April would not be much different to March. March had a slight decline on because the game was still riding a high on the coattails of the British GT DLC release in february. Now that the numbers are in, let us see if I was right!

A short TL;DR in advance:

  • April is a good indication of the game’s health: there were no outside influences to the playercounts, which remained steady and high.
  • We still don’t know what might be next for ACC, but an announcement (or v1.8 release) might be imminent. Surely.
  • May might, on average, become ACC’s biggest month even without a big DLC release to boost the numbers.

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, creating my own graphics and tables.

April 2021

Peak concurrent playercounts for April 2021

April was another steady month for ACC. Whereas March had a slight downward trend (from ~4750 to ~4400), the graph above shows a slight upward trend. The trend takes it back up from ~4600 to ~4800 concurrent players.

The highest number of concurrent players was on April 17th, with 5208 concurrent players. This was in the same week as this months’ lowest number: 4172, on April 14th. For comparison, March’ highest was 5050 (March 7th) and lowest was 3970 (March 31st).

Weekly averages of peak concurrent playercount for 2021

April’s first week averaged the lowest with an average of 4485. The subsequent weeks saw that number rise from 4657, to 4658, to a strong 4851. This final number is actually the highest weekly average concurrent playercount outside of any DLC releases. It’s actually higher than any week in 2020 – including DLC releases, as shown in last year’s chart. This shows that ACC is still gathering momentum.

April’s average peak concurrent playercount averages at 4709, putting it a firm second (after February 2021 due to the British GT DLC release). The average playercount (non-concurrent) landed at 1996, since January achieved slightly higher numbers, as you can see below.

All-time average player count and peak concurrent playercounts

4709 is a growth of 144 over March, which itself saw a decline of 302 over Februari. You can see the changes in averages peaks in the histogram below:

Monthly average playercount evolution, absolute.

If you prefer a more relative approach, I got you covered with the histogram below which shows a percentage based development of the average concurrent peaks;

Monthly average playercount evolution, relative.

Looking forward (May 2021)

If the trend set in April is any indication, May might come very near to February. Unfortunately, we still don’t know what’s next for ACC, so the odds of new DLC pack for May are very slim. This means that May’s number won’t receive a boost in playercount from any DLC release.

I still hold a slimmer of hope we might still get a ‘big’ update, i.e. v1.8. There were just 68 days between v1.6 and v1.7’s release. However, there were 142 days between v1.6 and v1.7, the longest between major updates to date. We are now 86 days without a major update, which will amount to 116 days by the end of May. A release of v1.8 in May would put it the length of v1.7’s reign right in the middle of those periods.

I personally think May’s average peak concurrent playercount could be anywhere between 4600 and 4900, which would mean more stabilization of the numbers. However, there’s two more things we should account for.

  1. Firstly, vaccination programs around the world are picking up steam, meaning that restrictions on outside activities will slowly fade away. In the Netherlands, for instance, the curfew was lifted this week and people are once again allowed to sit on terraces. Us simracers are less forced to stay inside, giving us more options to do beside racing.
  2. Secondly, it’s May. Spring. The days will grow longer and the weather will keep improving, making the lure to go outside greater than in the dreary winter months.

These things could potentially negatively impact ACC’s playercount. If they do, however, we will have to wait and see in the next post!

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6 Responses

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