The example in question comes from Remedy, the developer behind Alan Wake and Control, which recently announced on Twitter that its new co-op shooter, FBC: Firebreak, has surpassed 1 million players, thanking fans for helping them achieve the milestone and teasing “a lot of exciting things” to come. While, as mentioned above, promoting “players reached” instead of “copies sold” is already viewed negatively by many, this time the controversy isn’t just about that – it’s about how the 1 million figure was even determined in the first place.
For starters, the game’s performance on Steam – the only platform transparent enough to offer reliable data on the subject – has been nothing short of disastrous, with a peak of under 2,000 concurrent players at launch and now struggling to pass 200 users. According to PlayTracker – the most generous estimate I could find – the game has sold roughly 55,000 copies on Steam, which amounts to just 5.5% of the figure Remedy has boasted.
