Developers and publishers rarely disclose the amount of players that have purchased or played their game. It’s not unheard of - for example, Fortnite hit a whopping 200 million total players last month - but for the most part, that information is kept confidential. But for PlayStation 4 games, users have found a sneaky way to work out that information with some simple math and the recent “My PS4 Life” personalised videos.
“My PS4 Life” is the name of the personalised video you can request from Sony. It details the first game you played on your account, the amount of hours you’ve spent in your top three games, and your rarest achievement. This final tidbit of information is the important part, because it tells you exactly how many others have earned that achievement in the video. If you head to your trophy list, you can see what percentage that is of the overall player base for the game. Multiply the total number by 100 then divide it by the percentage and voila! You have the approximate total number of players that have played that game.
Of course, this means that each person can only work out the total player count for the one single game featured at the end of their video. Reddit user /u/gamstat posted to the /r/PS4 subreddit yesterday though, and has accumulated the information from thousands of players, working out the total player counts for hundreds of games. You can now view the ever-growing list over at GamStat.com.
Notable finds here include Fortnite - though it’s just the Save The World mode because Battle Royale has no trophies - at 16.2 million players across just Europe and Australia. Factor in all the other regions and Save The World by itself must easily have 30 million or more players. Grand Theft Auto V is by far the largest, with 51.7 million players globally, while Rocket League has amassed an impressive 22.6 million. Minecraft is also up there with 25.6 million, as is Rainbow Six Siege at 15.3 million. The FIFA games are huge every single year too, with FIFA 18 hitting 32.5 million players.
Of course, this information can’t be continuously updated since they aren’t official numbers and are highly likely to be somewhat inaccurate. One Reddit user also claims to work for “one of the games listed” and they say the “players displayed is double our lifetime units sold on that platform.” So take all of the information with a grain of salt, but it gives a decent estimation if you’re curious about your favorite games.
