ACC Playercounts in review: March 2021

Since we’re well into April by now, it’s time to review the player numbers for the past month: March 2021. In last month’s post I predicted the player numbers to go back to January’s totals after the record shattering month that was February. I predicted an average concurrent of ~4600 players. Now that the numbers are in, let us see if I was right!

A short TL;DR in advance:

  • After British GT DLC boosted ACC to new records, March reverted back to January’s levels of activity as a healthy correction;
  • We still don’t know what might be next for ACC, but an announcement might be imminent.
  • April won’t be much different to March.

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.

March 2021

While February saw a large boost because of the British GT DLCs release, the effect of this had largely subsided at the start of March. Typically, we see a two week boost to player numbers after a DLC’s release, and a return-to-normal in the third week. There is no difference here.

March’s peak was on March 7th, when 5,050 players played ACC concurrently. We see this Sunday-peak repeated the week after, with the 14th reaching 4,994 peak concurrent players – just a tiny bit under 5K. The third week’s peak was on the Saturday (4,992). In the fourth week, however, this peak was largely absent. The reason I think for this? The return of Formula 1 to our TV screens.

If you open this image (which shows the graph for Sunday’s raceday), you can clearly see a large dip in concurrent players where otherwise the big peak had been. This is caused by Drivers switching their rigs for their TV’s en masse as the race is about to start. This has always been a regular occurrence in the years before as well.

Daily peaks for 2021 so far.

This means that March’ peak concurrent playercount graph ends on a low note, as seen above. The average peak is still 4,565, which is 64 higher than the average of January but still a clear drop compared to February.

The last day of March actually dipped below the 4K line, which hadn’t happened since New Year’s Eve last December 31st (the graph above is a bit misleading, I know).

Weekly averages of 2021

In the graph above the weekly averages of March are adeed. The British GT DLCs two-week bump in player activity is now clearly visible in contrast to January and March. The slight drop in the final week of March (4,470) still puts it slightly above the player activity right before the British GT DLC was released (4,465).

Longitudinal comparison

If we were to put these numbers in the larger context of last years numbers (which we are totally going to do), lets first put this months’ averages into the chart. Yes, it goes down a bit, but so did Decembers numbers compared to Novembers (2020 Season DLC). Nothing to see here.

While the average peak was still above (+64) January’s average peak, the average playerscount (daily average) was far below it (-148). This leads me to assume that people put less hours into the game on average. I can’t think of a direct reason for this. The factor average daily players to peak concurrent players has always been between 2 – 2.2, but has risen to 2.41 for this month.

If you look at the graph above, the drop is actually eerily similar to December’s drop. While in absolute numbers it is a bit bigger (+6), in relative terms the drop-off is slightly less, as seen below.

Looking forward

Last month I said I expected Kunos to announce what was in store for ACC in the future, but they didn’t. I wrote an article exploring the different directions they might go, but these are still guesstimates: we still don’t know what will be next.

This lack of perspective on future updates might halt ACCs current growth rate, though I suspect a large ‘Quality of Life’ (QoL) update is on its way. I think April will be too soon for it to hit (I expect it to release early May) but an announcement in anticipation of it might be possible. And with it, it might bring more hype and activity towards the game.

A mere announcement will not bring a lot of heightened activity for April, so I expect April’s playercounts to be largely the same as last month’s.

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