While those willing to part with some extra cash have already been reveling in Civilization 7 thanks to its early access period, today finally sees its gates opened to everybody. The long-awaited strategy game was always going to ruffle some feathers with how it’s reshaped its game structure and unshackled leaders so that they can spearhead any civilization you want. But there’s no escaping the fact that early user reviews have been concerningly low for Civ 7. With more players pouring into the game today, things are slowly improving on the reviews front, and it’s naturally hit a new Steam player count peak too. While that peak may be half the size of what Civilization 6 achieved when it launched back in 2016, Civ 7’s wide multi-platform release may be a factor in the disparity.
It’s hard to believe it’s been over eight years since the last new entry in the Civilization series. Of course, Civ 6, now firmly one of the best strategy games ever, has been well fed with expansions, DLCs, and updates over that period and has remained steadily popular. That doesn’t mean excitement levels for Civilization 7 have been high, and there’s been plenty of intrigue around how some of its more radical gameplay decisions would shake out.
Since its early access launch last week, it’s been apparent that players aren’t totally satisfied with the state of Civ 7 – UI complaints and performance issues are being cited just as much as the impact of those aforementioned gameplay changes. A dismal 44% user rating on Steam on day one certainly set off some alarm bells.
However, that score has gradually increased over the last few days, and at the time of writing on the day of its full launch, it’s up to 52% positive. That’s of course still not great, but progress is progress. Firaxis is also already dropping patches to improve Civ 7 as quickly as possible.
So what about today’s influx of players, now that the full release is here? Well, we don’t know the entire picture, given that Civilization 7 is launching simultaneously across PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles as well as Steam and Epic on PC. But we can hone in on Steam player data.
During early access, the highest peak concurrent player count Civilization 7 achieved was around the 66,000 mark. On its full launch today on February 11, it topped out at just over 80,000 players – a modest but welcome uptick.
That means Civ 7’s launch day Steam peak is pretty much half of what its predecessor achieved – Civ 6 topped out at 162,000 players all the way back in 2016. While I’m sure Firaxis would want that gap to be much closer, the fact that Civilization 7 is launching on every major platform right out the gate does need to be factored in here. Civ 6 lived on PC exclusively for a while before gradually getting ported to other systems.
If you’re diving into the new game today or in the near future, make sure you consult our tier list of the best Civilization 7 leaders and check out our Civilization 7 cheats guide.
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