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what is more influential for a game's sales? streamers or metacritic?

what is more influential for a game's sales?

  • metacritic

    Votes: 10 33.3%
  • streamers / influencers

    Votes: 20 66.7%

  • Total voters
    30

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Was thinking about this earlier and wondered what you people think. Among Us released in 2018 on Steam and mobile to little hype and it was under the radar. Then in early 2020 streamers start playing it like crazy and it completely blows up to become one of the biggest games of the year. Constantly on top of Steam's best sellers despite being a $5 game with no microtransactions. Phasmophobia, Valheim, Escape from Tarkov, etc all seemingly got huge pushes from being popular with streamers. Not to mention bigger budget stuff like r6 siege, PUBG, GTAV RP, valorant, etc being huge with streamers.

Then you have games with 90+ metacritic that underperform. Spelunky 2 has a 91 on metacritic and seemingly flopped. Look at the player numbers.

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That was just the first example off the top of my head but there are lots. IDK, what do you think? Almost seems like you would be better off paying Lirik and Dr Disrespect to play your game for a week than buying a bus ad or whatever.
 

YukiOnna

Member
Influencers/Twitch Streamers if we're talking general audience. I don't think the general populace gives a shit about Metacritic or review scores that much anymore. Even back then, it was more major sites like IGN, GameInformer, GameTrailers, etc. that people cared about than specifically metacritic I'd say.
 

Zambatoh

Member
I think it depends on the type of game really.
Metacritic brings mainstream attention to major releases. While streamers have been a significant boon for indies.
 

01011001

Banned
depends on the game

Valheim for example 100% streamers.

Among Us, also 100% a success because of streamers

Sea of Thieves literally got a second life after Summit1G played it for weeks with 80k+ viewers each day

but games like Spider-Man sell simply because of the name
games like GTA as well... and the others sell due to promo campaigns mostly.

I actually think Metacritic doesn't really have any influence beyond maybe a select few people that actually buy according to those ratings

it's 99% PR, be it by the publisher or PR through streamers discovering the game and promoting it simply by playing it for a big audience
 
Streamers help the trash games because it's like a garbage feedback loop where streamers have to stream it to get the viewers and the viewers want to see it because it is being streamed.

I think metacritic helps the "good" games more, not in quantity because the average gamer doesn't give a shit about playing good games (see above), but when someone does want to evaluate a potential game to play metacritic serves as a quick initial filter of games to look into deeper.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
If I'm interested in a game I watch someone stream it for 30 minutes and I've made up my mind if I'm going to spend my money or not.

Streamers definitely saved me quite some money, but also introduced me to a TON of games I never would've bought otherwise. So it's basically a double win for streamers.
 

jaysius

Banned
Some trash games that never earn all their fanbase or any of their money owes the streamers they pay to play the trash way more than the steamer earns.
 

MrS

Banned
depends on the type of game. usually its metacritic but a piece of shit in the mould of fall guys will always benefit more by streamers than meta
 
I'd say for 95% of games, review scores. For the other 5%, they'll sell a hell of a lot of copies to the YouTube crowd (mostly kids).

Roblox, Minecraft, Goat Simulator and crap like that owe most of their popularity to YouTube. Big AAA console games depend much more heavily on review scores.
 
Last edited:

reksveks

Member
At a certain level, metacritic doesn't make a difference to sales.

Pretty sure there is a GDC presentation on this
 
Last edited:

TrueLegend

Member
Getting a 9 on IGN, regardless of how you feel about IGN. IGN has a very strong global presence not to mention 16M subscribers on Youtube. Myspace, Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Twitch they all lose their PR premiumness sooner or later. Also Celeste did great for its budget. Although I would like to see Both IGN and Twitch burned to the ground, IGN for its mediocrity and Twitch for its predatory practices on teenagers. When you look on the economics of things always look outside your bubble.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
PUBG and Fortnite were openly mocked by game critics at release.

Streamers played the f*** out of them because they were so fun.

Critics are out of touch.
 

RiccochetJ

Gold Member
I think it depends on the game. Some games just do not do well on Twitch or Youtube and so wouldn't have the effect that review scores would.
 

CitizenZ

Banned
The only time I ever saw a streamer influenced sales was because someone actually showed the data and that was when PDP started to play Minecraft. I have never seen any other data to show otherwise. Seriously, do you think becasue X streamer played CoD, BF or any other named game it moves the needle, nah. And most are not at the front of trends but catch the waves.
 
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