Steam Charts: Happiness Is Just Around The Corner
I've got something to tell you
I'm trying to think who it could be. I don't really have enemies any more, or not knowingly so. Some forgotten bully from school who never left our hometown and is still obsessed with tormenting me? A fellow journalist whose article I might have drunkenly tweeted something rude about in 2009? Someone I unfollowed or unfriended because they were tiresome or awful? You Know, Those Guys? Or: all of them, working together. Pooling their life savings to buy as many copies of a certain game as they can. Make no mistake: someone's out to get me. It's the only possible explanation.
These are the Steam charts, which every week round up the top-ten best-selling games on Steam from the previous week. The regular feature was created with the intention of keeping a finger on the pulse of what was and wasn't selling in PC games land, though increasingly suggests a market wary of new things.
Regular viewers will have seen my sanity apparently seem to crumble as I include the same games time and again, but I can reveal to you now that has all been a facade. My agonies have been merely for show - for your entertainment.
I can assure you, as I sit here on my throne made from my neighbours' bones, supping dishwater from a cup carved out of their Labrador's pelvis, and watching my captured and starving troupe of Vengaboys miserably perform We Like to Party! (The Vengabus) on endless repeat, that I feel 100% tickety-boo. On with the charts!
1. Grand Theft Auto V
2. Battlerite
ACTUALLY NEW ACTUALLY NEW. Battlerite is the spiritual successor to PvP team brawler/shooter Bloodlines Champions, which has raced damn near to the top of the charts based on an Early Access version alone. I believe Brendy is powering up the Brendybrain for some Premature Evaluation thoughts on it quite soon.
3. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
4. Divinity: Original Sin 2
Down from 2. Another Early Access sales triumph, which is odd, given that forty million people declare their deep and abiding hatred of Early Access whenever it's mentioned. For everyone who mistrusts the system, there seem to be at least a couple who still enjoying getting to see a game evolve and potentially improve over time. Me, I prefer to play an RPG, as DOS2 is, with the knowledge that its tale is complete, but others get far more out of revisiting to see what's new or tinkering with different character builds than I do.
5 - Cossacks 3
Half-sequel, half-remake of the noughties historical real-time strategy game. I quite liked it, in terms of being a comforting throwback to a bygone era, but it's a little small in scope (though not unit count) and some folk complain that it's a touch buggy. (I didn't run into anything particularly problematic myself, for the record.)
6. NBA 2K17
It puts the ball in the net or it gets the hose again.
7. ARK: Scorched Earth - Expansion Pack
8. Cossacks 3
One of these two Cossacks is the standard version, and the other the £8 pricier 'digital deluxe' version that will eventually add four chunks of DLC, including new campaigns and factions. I couldn't tell you which of these entries was which.
9. Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
Here's our first new pre-order entry in a while. It seems appetite for a new Civ is undiminished by the cool reception to sci-fi spin-off Beyond Earth. Is it a matter of Always Bet On Firaxis or just a feeling that Earth is more tried-and-tested than space?
10. NBA 2K17
Two of them? Oh come on, this is just a cruel thing to do to a man who was tragically born without a sports gene. This is probably the £20 pricier Legend edition. Though it could be the £80 Legend Edition Gold, in which case WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU ALL?