Didnt know that! That is actually Quite interesting.

I was surprised that Civ V has higher traffic than Skyrim! That should tell a little something to those who think 4X are a dying genre. I wish GalCiv II had higher numbers but hey its a pretty old game and many of its hardcore fans are not counted as they probably don't have it on steam.  I bought it retail in 2006 and then bought the expensions on StarDock Central, hehe.  Thanks for sharing that.

Brad:

Just out of curiousity, since you seem much more relaxed about sharing details other publishers would probably be appalled by ... have you ever seen significant bumps in sales of older games (like GC2) that correspond with fan-made mods?  More than just a few dozen or so participating on a thread about a mod, do mods actually generate a significant bump in the baseline sales for the game?

This is Interesting but, doesn't tell the whole story...

For instance Galactic Civilizations II is at a disadvantage in those graphs being that most of the original buyers purchased the game on Impulse (GameStop) or bought retail.  This being said those that went that way won't be included in that graph as when they play the game it has no affiliation with Steam.

As example I purchased GalCiv II prior to the release of Dark Avatar from Best Buy, purchased a hard copy of Dark Avatar direct through Stardock, and Twilight through Impulse (mailed hard copy) Not in my Steam Account.

Also the other games is not 100% accurate either, however, I'd say more accurate than GalCiv II being they have active expansions (DLC) that only are available through Steam.  But in my case with Sins, is once again I purchased retail, and the expansions I do own I purchased through Impulse (GameStop) and do not have that game in Steam either.

This is not going to be the case with GalCivIII as it's only available through Steam so those numbers will be accurate.  I would imagine 2-4 times more players play GalCivII monthly than Steam shows but, only about 50% more with Sins.

Anyways that's my 2 cents... 

I can't access your link or the images from work, but you must be mistaken.

There is no way Sins could be more popular than LH.   

Do the spikes map up with big sale events in general?

Jesus DotA 2...it can't just be ALL 12-17 yearolds playing that game. That means a lot of those foul mouthed, infantile players are adults. Which is not surprising, just more irritating.

MOBAs brings the worst out of gamers. But still, the Dota 2 numbers are quite... impressive.

What else is impressive is that Banished, that little city building game made by a single dude is in the Steam top 25

Yeah I saw that. While I am disappointed in the game, still enjoy it enough though, I am definitely glad its doing so well.

Yup, my copy is the original game release (expansions bought directly from Stardock) and has no Steam involvement. Hadn't played it in a couple of years until I got the email about v.3 coming out so I loaded it up and have been playing the past few weeks re-living old memories.

It doesn't seem that surprising, actually ... Sins is more multiplayer-oriented.  I'm glad singleplayer-oriented games are still being developed.  I like Sins okay, but the AI is definitely lackluster for single player.  Similarly, I love Skyrim, but don't think I'll touch TESO.

The Civs and Totalwars are a fair bit ahead in this genre in player base.

FG's compete well with MOBAs in this regard- just ask Sanford Kelly's stick.

I hope GalCiv3 gets into Civ or TW territory.

Pretty sure Sins has always sold more than Elemental too. 

Odd, much of the Sins community laments that its multiplayer is not as popular as it should be. For most Sins players it is a single player game.

I swear half those sales are so people can smurf better on ICO...

The most I've ever seen on ICO is 500 people. While the total playing Sins at that time was probably well above 1400, even if not that means only a bit more than a third of people were even interested in playing any sort of multiplayer at all. A good chunk of these would be playing comp stomps, mod games or with friends, and they have no reason to smurf. I'd say at most 5% of the online players would actually want to smurf, and fewer actually will because hey, that costs money.

So unless those smurfers are buying 10+ copies of the game I doubt it makes a big difference in Sins sales, and it couldn't effect the player counts.