Steam Charts: Pretty Broken Edition
It's coming apart at the seams
I'm nothing if not a hypocrite. Week after week I lament you utterly awful people buying the exact same five games again and again and again and again and again and again and again. This week I shall lament people buying games that barely even exist. Hold my hand, let me walk you through this most peculiar of weeks, and into oncoming traffic.
9. Devil May Cry 5
Did you know that every time you pre-order a game for which there are no reviews, a tiny newborn puppy is bitten in half by a crazed millionaire publisher? It has to be true, I wouldn't be allowed to just make this stuff up.
DMC5 is out on the 8th, and could be great or terrible or something in between. Enough people have a spare £45 to spend on it before they know, with literally nothing to gain for having done so! That makes sense. Everything makes sense. The whole system isn't fundamentally broken and I don't need to bang my head on this desk about it!
8. Dead Or Alive 6 Digital Deluxe Edition With Bonus
I don't claim to be a genius. That's for other people to claim about me. So I'm sure there's a rational explanation for this entry. Charting here is not vanilla Dead Or Alive 6, at a colossal £50, which itself is discounted from the £55 it'll cost come the 11th March - no, this is the Digital Deluxe Edition With Bonus. And that bonus is?
I'm utterly befuddled. According to the Steam page, it's the base version of the game, plus nothing else at all, for an extra £13.50. I mean, the store page pictured above literally states it's a "-£13.50" saving! And this tempted enough people to chart this version of the game?
OK, there has to be a sensible reason this has happened, something that's changed and not been updated, I've no idea. But even so, there it is, yours to see. And I see this so often! Weird extra-expensive versions of games that nowhere on their store pages explain what the additional advantages are.
The Digital Deluxe version, btw, before the bonus of getting to pay an extra £13.50 for nothing at all, charges an extra £15 for one new character, some extra costumes, and three more music tracks. This is where we are.
And that's before we even get onto how the Dead Or Alive 6 Season Pass costs SEVENTY-FOUR POUNDS, and contains... some new costumes, and eventually two new characters. That's it!!! £74 on top of the £50 the game costs! That's all that you get! Which is, I'll admit, still better value for money than the Digital Deluxe With Bonus.
This is probably all your fault.
7 & 10. 隐形守护者 The Invisible Guardian
Well, it certainly lives up to its name.
This game, taking up two spots in this week's maddest of mad charts, at first seems to not even exist. There's no Steam page for it, there's no mentions of it anywhere when you Google it (apart from one of those wretched Gamespot holding pages that scoops up Google results to present a page with "Follow The Invisible Guardian, and we'll let you know when we have any news, trailers, or screenshots" written on it. Stop doing that Gamespot, it's GROSS). This is all then further confused since it's also the title of an apparently not very good Spanish film from 2017.
But after a bit of sleuthing (putting the Steam code for it into SteamDB) it seems this is a game that's only available in China. Aha! In the past when Chinese games have sold super-well in those territories, we usually at least get to see a Chinese language Steam page. This time it's simply not available in our region. If our region isn't China.
So I've nothing to tell you, I'm afraid. It's peculiarly blanked in the West, with not a review nor comment on Metacritic, and in all the minutes and minutes of effort I put in, I couldn't find a screenshot either. But I'm imagining a lovely Ico-like game in my head, and that's nice.
6. Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns
Talking of having nothing to tell you... Argh! Adam! Come back Adam! I'll let you edit out all my dead Tom Clancy jokes again if you come back!
This just looks like geography and history homework COMBINED.
Anyway, for proper grown ups, this is the latest expansion to the 2016 hardcore strategy game, with whole new campaigns, units, skills, modes and tons more. And unlike Dead Or Alive up there in #8, costs £15.50 instead of seven million pounds. In fact, you can get the base game and all three previous expansions for under £30 today (Monday 4th).
5. Ummmmmmmm
Told you it was a weird one. This was, I think, one of those ridiculous CSGO tournament packs, this time perhaps one that let you watch a tournament online? Again SteamDB is our only clue, because the original store page has been completely deleted now. It was listed as, "IEM 2019 Katowice CS:GO Major Championship Viewer Pass", but I can't prove it.
So I thought instead we could enjoy a lovely picture of a seahorse, taken by Paul Hewart, who should be celebrated for sharing his splendid photographs for free.
4. Flibble Glibble Pants
What’s Another Thing You Could Buy Instead Of GTA V Again? £12.50 Edition
Some testicles for your bicycle
3. Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm
This feels FAR too ordinary to be here this week. Shouldn't this be a Portuguese-only version that can only be bought from a hooded lady who lives in a secret cave? Or have been only available for one afternoon if you could guess Sid Meier's password?
At least it's an expansion pack that costs the price of a brand new game, additionally requiring a full game that costs £50 despite being PC only and two and a half years old. At least we still have that to cling on to.
2. Plunkbat
I think some chilling out is called for, so how about some Chuck Johnson. Riga Black, from his album Balsams. Jump to 2 minutes to get to the proper start of the tune.
1. Dawn Of Man
A straight-into-number-one situation for this out-of-nowhere prehistoric city builder. Which is pretty darned impressive. And worthy of note since this is a "highest grossing" chart, rather than copies sold, and it's only charging £16.50. TAKE NOTE, EVERYONE WHO THOUGHT THEY HAD A GOOD COMMENT ABOUT MY COMPLAINING ABOVE.
We've got a review going up this afternoon, but I can exclusively reveal that Alec says "s'good". I don't honestly know what time he saved missing out the "It" there, but he also wrote "this arvo", so there's absolutely no explaining him.
It'll be interesting to see if this one has legs, despite launching as a finished thing, rather than going through Early Update. But for now you could call it a... mammoth achievement. I mean, you could, but no one would ever look at you in the same way again.
The Steam Charts are compiled via Steam's internal charts of the highest grossing games on Steam over the previous week.