ACC Playercounts in Review: August and September 2021

It’s October now. Which means, time for another rundown of ACC’s player statistics. Last month, I was on a well-deserved holiday. Therefore, we’ll be analysing both August and September today. So hold on tight, while I take a deep dive into the numbers of these past two months!

In short: the decline is over! The steep downward trend we saw starting in May and which continued over June and July has been halted. There’s even a small hint of recovery. Not by much, but the signs are there.

A short TL;DR in advance:

• August saw a slight growth in popularity of ACC, the first time since May.
• September continued this recovery in peak concurrent player counts, even accelerating the growth.
• October might see more people return to the game, as the conditions for simracing improve!

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.

August 2021 playercounts

July ended fairly poorly, with regular dips below the 3K-line. August did have some (2, on August 13th and August 14th) dips below the 3K-line, with the lowest number being 2932 on August 13th. However, the second part of August saw the player numbers move away from this imaginary danger line decidedly.

This amounted to a strong ending towards the end of August, with 4253 concurrent players on August 30th being this month’s peak. The trendline has, for the first time in months, an upward trajectory, going from ~3400 at the start to ~3700 towards the end of the month.

Taken on a week-to-week basis, the lowest average was in week 32 (3290) while the last full week of August (week 34) saw this number increase back to 3739 (figure 2, above).

Overall, August had an average of 3560 peak concurrent players. While not much, this is still 148 concurrent players over last month’s average (figure 3). Relatively, this means an increase of 4.34% (figure 4). After June’s decline of 11.4% and July’s 20.6%, this is a very welcome change and means the game’s population is not in freefall.

The average player count (non-concurrent) also recovered. It went up from 1571 to 1668 (+97). This increase of 6.2% is larger than the concurrent player growth, indicating that people have been playing longer. This might be due to the northern hemisphere’s Summer holiday being in full effect, giving players more time to play.

September 2021 playercounts

August’s growth was continued or rather consolidated in September. It went on where August ended, with peak concurrent player counts amounting to high 3K values daily as can be seen in figure 6. The lowest concurrent player count was 3511 (September 18th). This is considerably better than the 2900s seen in August and July. Truly a sign of the playercount recovering!

Looking at the other end of the spectrum, the highest concurrent player count was an abnormal peak of 4823 (September 6th). As I was on holiday, I have no idea what could’ve caused this singular peak in concurrent players count. Feel free to fill me in on that one in a comment below if you have a suspicion!

Looking at the weekly averages (figure 7), the first two weeks of September were its strongest: 3981 for week 35 (Aug. 30th – Sep. 5th) and 3982 for week 36 (Sep. 6th – 12th). The average decreased a bit after that, but not alarmingly so. The final week of September averaged out at 3735, which is still very near August’s strongest week (3739).

Taken as a whole, September saw the average peak concurrent player count increase to 3839, from 3560 in August. This is a growth of 279, the biggest (positive) growth we had since February 2021 (figure 8, above). Relatively, it is very close to February’s growth with a growth percentage of 7.84% (figure 9), below.

The average player count also went up (by 40, or 2.42%, figure 10). The reason this number is lower is exactly the same why this number was higher than the peak concurrent growth in August: summer holiday ended.

While this overall growth is a good thing, we are still far removed from the numbers we saw in the first part of 2021 (by about a 1000). At least the current uptick in playercounts is proof that ACC is able to weather the storm.

Looking ahead (October 2021 and beyond)

Last time around, I wrote that doing these write-ups is fun when the numbers are booming is fun, but when the opposite is happening, it isn’t. Well, the numbers this time around aren’t exactly booming, but it is a hell of a lot better than delivering bad news like I had to the couple of times before this write-up.

Another good thing happened in this period. And no, I’m not talking about getting engaged to my girlfriend. The Assetto Corsa Showcase happened on August 28th, which brought a little bit of perspective on the future of ACC.

A couple of vague hints were dropped, which leads me to believe that we are at least getting the new BMW M4 GT3 and the GT2 class added to the existing content. Unfortunately, no time frames were mentioned, so we will have to wait and see when this comes to fruition.

With Autumn now being in full control of the weather, people might opt to stay inside and go racing again. I don’t think there will be a huge growth, especially since September’s trend was fairly horizontal. However, I believe an average of around 4000 peak concurrent players should be a realistic projection.

I’m going to keep this epilogue short, as I have said a lot already and you guys must be tired of reading my ramblings. I hope you enjoyed this write-up once again, and I hope to see you November 1st (or thereabouts) for October’s numbers!

Overview & Previous Articles

• 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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