Black Friday is over for another year but which games benefitted most from the discounts and extra attention?
Now that the madness of Black Friday is over we’ve taken a look to see which games enjoyed a post Black Friday boost and which didn’t. You can only really do that on Steam but the results should be relatively similar for most consoles.
Steam’s Black Friday sale might’ve started later than others, like PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo, but it was just as full of bargains. The PC retail giant offered popular games for discounts as high as 90% off, and not just for stuff you’ve never heard of.
It wasn’t just old games that saw price cuts either, as EA Sports FC 24 was 50% off and Diablo 4 was 40% cheaper then at launch. But the really big discounts belonged to older games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt at 80% off and Portal 2 at 90% off.
The effect of these discounted prices has given many games a healthy boost, including Red Dead Redemption 2 and both Portal titles, while others actually saw less people play than before Black Friday.
So how did some of the most popular games do? We’ve checked to see which titles saw its player count increase the most, by comparing the peak player count on the Sunday before the sale started and the Sunday during the sale.
Here’s the full list, in descending order of player growth, from Sunday to Sunday, via SteamDB:
- Dave The Diver: 5,297 to 19,615 players – 270.3% increase
- Portal: 619 to 2,130 players – 244.1% increase
- Diablo 4: 8,606 to 28,466 players – 230.7% increase
- Portal 2: 2,450 to 7,131 players – 191.0% increase
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor: 1,841 to 3,958 players – 114.9% increase
- Dead Space: 749 to 1,596 players – 113.0% increase
- Forza Horizon 5: 12,536 to 24,888 players – 98.5% increase
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: 1,287 to 2,374 players – 84.4% increase
- Titanfall 2: 4,217 to 7,575 players – 79.6% increase
- Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: 5,362 to 9,521 players – 77.5% increase
- Doom Eternal: 1,443 to 2,480 players – 71.8% increase
- Spider-Man Miles Morales: 1,880 to 3,059 players – 62.7% increase
- Red Dead Redemption 2: 47,369 to 76,616 players – 61.7% increase
- Hogwarts Legacy: 14,943 to 23,291 players – 55.8% increase
- Battlefield 2042: 34,094 to 52,024 players – 52.5% increase
- No Man’s Sky: 7,774 to 11,631 players – 49.6% increase
- Street Fighter 6: 17,721 to 25,743 players – 45.2% increase
- Spider-Man 5,017 to 7,006 players – 39.6% increase
- EA Sports FC 24: 49,713 to 68,625 players – 38% increase
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: 19,798 to 27,326 players – 38.0% increase
- Prey: 2,465 to 1,746 players – 29.1% increase
- Cyberpunk 2077: 54,970 to 64,521 players – 17.3% increase
- The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Special Edition: 29,393 to 33,653 players – 14.4% increase
- Lies Of P: 6,851 to 6,787 players – 0.9% decrease
- Remnant 2: 21,283 to 21,027 players – 1.2% decrease
- Starfield: 31,090 to 30,600 players – 1.5% decrease
- New World: 35,492 to 34,581 players – 2.5% decrease
- Mortal Kombat 1: 6,084 to 5,732 players – 5.7% decrease
- Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3: 8,189 to 7,605 players – 7.1% decrease
- Dishonored 2: 3,258 to 2,745 players – 15.7% decrease
Portal and Diablo 4 are easy to explain – one is super famous and mega cheap, while the other is very new and also had a major discount – but there are a few different reasons why Dave The Diver came out on top.
The most obvious is that it’s really good and one of the most critically acclaimed indie games of the year. It was also 20% off in the sales, making it an absolute steal at £13.59.
On top of that it’s nominated in next week’s The Game Awards but has courted controversy because while it is by a small team, and certainly looks like an indie game, the parent company is a giant multinational.
As a result, there’s been a lot of argument over whether it counts as an indie game or not and, as they say, all publicity is good publicity.
The Steam sales are now over but Dave The Diver is still well worth the normal £16.99 asking price. It’s also currently available on Nintendo Switch for the same price.
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