Skyrim DLC Statistics and Questionnaire

[1shoedpunk]

Over at Beyond Skyrim, we've been having a discussion about whether or not we should rely on Skyrim's DLC. Our Morrowind project will definitely require Dragonborn, but beyond that we haven't decided if we would on other projects. Initially, there was a strong resistance to using DLC, since it would in essence "raise the cost of admission". However, there are a lot of assets, including skeletons for different creature-types, that would allow us to do a lot more than what can be done in vanilla Skyrim. The perception some of our members had was that most people who owned Skyrim probably also owned the DLC, but we couldn't prove anything one way or the other. So, I did some research.

 

Actual sales numbers are not public data (other than that overall 3.4 million PC copies were sold), but I did some calculations based on the completion of achievements on Steam for the first quest in each DLC. The results are below and actually a bit surprising to me. The below is adjusted for the number of players that completed Unbound. Only 89.7% of players completed it, so I would imagine the others who own it haven't even picked up the game, played offline, or had a bug preventing their achievements from being recorded.

Dawnguard - Awakening 21%

Hearthfire - Landowner 16%

Dragonborn - Outlander 14%

So, the most owned DLC is Dawnguard, but less than a quarter of all Skyrim players bought any DLC at all on PC. Of course, that doesn't account for pirated copies of DLC, which are much easier to distribute on PC than other consoles, but the picture it paints is also fairly grim for Bethesda. With sales progressively lower for each DLC released, it makes sense that they stopped producing content for Skyrim and does not bode well for future DLC releases.

In addition, I calculated the XBox statistics a bit differently and based on a different sample population. I used statistics from www.trueachievements.com, so the number from here would be skewed upwards. People who would opt in to a service like this would logically care more about tracking their achievements, so they would be more likely to purchase DLC (since it would give them a greater opportunity to increase their gamer score). TA tracks ownership of the DLC as well as achievements, so the number with relation to the population is more accurate.

Dawnguard - Awakening 30%

Hearthfire - Landowner 27%

Dragonborn - Outlander 20%

So, again, Dawnguard is the most owned and the other DLCs rank in the same order.

Anyway, regardless of the statistics for overall DLC sales, we have to keep in mind that the above DLC ownership stats don't differentiate between modders or people who would just play the game out of the box. What really matters to us is the DLC ownership rate of players that *would* mod their game. So, that is what led me to put up this poll. I figure the question is just as relevant to other modders, hopefully you agree.

 

[Aenyalu]

Heya!

You might want to change the poll somewhat by adding a 'None' option to the sencond question. Currently the vote only counts if you answer all three questions, which is not possible (at least not correctly) if one doesn't own a DLC :wink:

[1shoedpunk]

Heya!

You might want to change the poll somewhat by adding a 'None' option to the sencond question. Currently the vote only counts if you answer all three questions, which is not possible (at least not correctly) if one doesn't own a DLC :wink:

Thanks, I updated it. Though, that'll let people choose none of the above and the DLC, but that's why I made it public.

[SkyShadowing]

Those statistics are interesting, to say the least. I don't think DLC adoption ever comes close to most games.

 

I'd argue that statistics that would be more relevant to you would be comparing the rate of adoption between http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/19//?'>the http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/23491//?'>four http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/25127//?'>Unofficial http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/31083//?'>Patches, since anyone who would be interested in downloading a mod would have presumably picked them up. It's significantly higher.

[1shoedpunk]

That is a good point. Though, I'd have to discuss with Arthmoor and potentially one of the Nexus admins to be able to get the data in a format where we'd be able to identify distinct individual users. I'm not sure how accurate we'd be able to get it.

[Transbot9]

So far, the early results of the poll look to be that if someone owns one of the DLC, they own all of the DLC. That's useful information, but so far our sampling (number of people who've voted) is too small to make a determination on.

[TheVampireDante]

Did you account for the legendary edition release? Since it includes all the DLC I wouldn't expect it to be factored into DLC sales figures, but actual game sales.

 

A lot of people hold off on buying any DLC until they know if a special/collectors edition is going to be produced, as they expect such a release to include the DLC and be a cheaper purchase in the long run.

[1shoedpunk]

Did you account for the legendary edition release? Since it includes all the DLC I wouldn't expect it to be factored into DLC sales figures, but actual game sales.

 

A lot of people hold off on buying any DLC until they know if a special/collectors edition is going to be produced, as they expect such a release to include the DLC and be a cheaper purchase in the long run.

Yes, the PC numbers track achievements, which are the same across the board.

 

So far, the poll here actually shows that most people that mod (or at least most of you who have seen this thread) own all the DLC and anyone who doesn't does plan on getting it. Of course, the sample size is a bit low at the moment. I definitely encourage you to share this poll within the Skyrim modding community so we could get a more accurate number.

[Darkstorne]

Voted. I own all of the DLC. Very interested to see how this develops :)

[1shoedpunk]

There is a similar poll on Bethsoft with very similar results.