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Well, I know at least one part of this is pretty out of date. Baldur’s Gate 3 just got confirmed a few weeks ago as having sold over 20M copies. We have so many round numbers here because companies generally only share milestones.
Not just out of date, complete and utter fabrication.
TIL people eat shit from the “visual capitalist” and swallow it whole. I’d bet my right nut this image took 15min of AI “prompt engineering” and 30 of photoshop copy-paste. None of if is remotely reliable.
Its source is a wiki, noted in the bottom right corner. I’ve seen plenty of these numbers reported publicly before. By its very nature, it’s going to lag behind real time.
Funny you should say that, because I checked the source and they haven’t compiled the 2025 list. You know what would definitely halucinate one…
I see different figures for the list. The one in the infographic does not exist.
There were three edits in the past few days. Feel free to look at the diff, but I’m not making a Fandom account to do so. It would stand to reason that it was this list, and those three edits probably account for Palworld’s number being lower in the graphic and why the wiki has two more games on it, if they pulled the data more than a few days ago.
If only there was a pervasive tool nowadays that is famously inaccurate, likes to hallucinate and frequently cites deprecated data… Something artificial that
slopcontent mill producing shitrags like the visual capitalist like to use… I can’t quite put my finger on it…edit: Fyi, that’s why any writer worth its salt puts dates on their citations and usually citations include urls. Just another piece of the puzzle that when put together screams “visual capitalist is a shitrag low effort content mill and people should not propagate their message”.
Where are you getting the term “visual capitalist”? And why did you learn about this phenomenon today? Misinformation has been rampant for over a decade now.
I’m sad Howard’s legacy sold so well.
Also Cyberpunk sold better than I expected given the launch.
i’m wondering if the boycott had adverse effects and promoted the game in more gamer-centric spaces that otherwise wouldn’t have cared that much
obviously it’s a harry potter game, it was always gonna sell well. but 2nd best selling game of the last 5 years??? ouch
CDPR spent the time fixing CP2077 and then released a killer DLC, putting the entire game on sale a ton along the way. They also listened and reconfigured entirely some of the clunky parts of gameplay/RPG elements.
Screw a bad launch as long as the Dev delivers in the end and not just pisses off. And they did. It’s one of the greatest games of all times. And I’m gaming daily since pong and pacman.
There are tons of shitty releases that stay shitty but offer micro transactions and 2646 dlcs. CP has one add-on that is also fantastic.
Being an early adopter sucks in this industry. That’s why I waited over a year to play it and had not one single issue in 3 playthroughs.
I played it at release, and I had a negligible number of technical issues on PC. Not everyone had a bad time with it back then.
Same here. Old PC (though quite good for the time), no issues whatsoever.
Idk, I’ve tried to play it at least half a dozen times since it was “fixed” and it still just seems rushed and unfinished, just less buggy now.
To be fair, Hogwarts Legacy is a very good game, I started playing yesterday and the atmosphere of the movies is perfectly captured! I did expect a cash grab, but I was totally wrong.
As someone who has beaten the game. The cash grab part is just after your first day and the “open world” starts up.
It’s not a bad game, but it gets pretty bland and generic once the main loop of ditching school starts.
For now there’s nothing of the sort, but I’m only a few hours in. Could it be too good to be true…?
Well, let’s see. It is a AAA game after all…
Edit: No, the game really is fun. 20 hours in, and I must say even if it were only exploring Hogwarts it would be quite worth my time. The music and atmosphere are really neat.
Edit2: I can’t believe it’s a AAA title. There is no ingame shop, everything is obtainable just by playing. The world is beautiful and full of interesting stuff to find. And best of all: it’s fun! The cash grab part is just a lie. If you have an agenda, use arguments, not lies.
I did not know that It Takes Two was that popular.
I wonder how many of those are the free version that you can only play when playing with someone who has the paid version
This is number of copies sold. It really did sell that high. And if that blows your mind, wait until you find out Human Fall Flat sold like 40M copies.
Maybe, although the title says “best selling”
I’m pleasantly surprised that it takes two did so well. I hope it shows publishers that there’s a market for couch co-op!
Too bad their newer game (Split Fiction) wasn’t that good. I read good reviews about it, but when I played it it was completely disappointing: stupid story, repetitive games, no “aaahh” moments like in their previous games.
This has to be one of the worst designed data visualizations I’ve seen in a long time. God knows social media isn’t wanting for shitty dataviz, but this one is particularly awful. It’s an assault on my senses trying to read it.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised from a company called “visual capitalist”.
You can hate me for saying this, but there’s no way Minecraft shouldn’t be on that chart. If this data is right Minecraft Revenue and Usage Statistics (2025), the sales between 2020 and 2023 would be ~100M.
I suspect these are the best selling games which released between 2020 and 2025. For instance, Breath of the Wild has sold about 33 million copies, over 10 million more than Tears of the Kingdom but was released in 2017.
If that’s what they are counting, then the graphic should say that…
The sentence itself, could be taken either way, but any reasonably intelligent gamer would be able see the list has only games released since 2020 and know which way to take the sentence.
There’s nothing about this that says “Best-Selling Video Games Released Between 2020-2025”.
And, the tagline “Where Data Tells The Story” really means they should be explaining exactly the data they are presenting. Accurate framing is every bit as important as the information… You can’t assume that two people looking at the same piece of information are going to interpret it the same way unless it is properly framed and presented.
Sorry you couldn’t put two and two together in the gamers instance.
Oh, I get it…but my point is not everyone will get it, and the information is inaccurate. Sorry you can’t understand that data presentation isn’t just about gamers…it’s a much larger issue these days… And this is just a really good example of it being handled badly.
You’re taking this instance of gamers far too seriously.
Their source is this page on the Video Game Sales Wiki, which does say “The following titles are the best-selling games released in the 2020s, as of 2025.”. That’s how I read the headline, but you’re right, it would have helped if Visual Capitalist had clarified by including that bit of info.
Yup, and the article (Ranked: The Best-Selling Video Games Since 2020} that was published using that data mis-represents it:
This visualization ranks the best-selling video games from 2020 to 2025 based on global unit sales using data from Video Game Sales Wiki (Fandom).
IMO - I find the “Visual Capitalist” site to be a questionable source of information… There are quite a few red flags when it comes to that site.
Pretty much all single player games guess we best roll another overwatch clone
Since the graphic is counting sales in units sold I guess free to download “live services” wouldn’t really appear.
Would be interesting to see the same counting revenues.
I had no idea Animal Crossing was that high. It’s a stupid game with no point to it… and I can’t help but play it 2-3 times a week, even if it’s just to check in. It definitely has its moments. I gave my wife shit for paying $60 for it, and I played it daily for most of the year since we got it. (She dropped it after a couple weeks, which tanked my progress since only the first player can advance the island. We started over with me starting an island and she played here and there. Then she quit, and I wanted to start over again… and she hasn’t used the new island yet, and I’ve had it for over 7 months now. It will be my forever island.)
And Hogwarts over everything but Animal Crossing? That’s kinda wild. I did not think that game was that big. Currently playing it, it was recently given away on Epic Game Store, I wonder if giveaways count (probably not). It’s basically the Harry Potter simulator we’ve all wanted for the last 20-25 years. Whenever those books and movies started coming out. Except it doesn’t have Harry Potter, or anything from the series but the places.
Well. I have about 1500 hours in AC and around 160 in Hogwarts. So those are probably both my most game hours.
Next is probably outlast trials. ~100 ish I have an eclectic taste in games.
AC is a cozy designer game. And you can play with friends. It was the best game for a pandemic. Not just a girls game either. Half my guy friends played the hell out of that game. I also was a AC new leaf fan so I was so ready for new horizons.
Its not that different than games like Minecraft. I think it appeals to people in similar ways.
As for Hogwarts.
For a lot of us millennials who grew up with Harry Potter ,the game felt like being in a Harry Potter movie. It was a beautiful game at 4k. Like I couldn’t believe how beautiful every square inch of the castle was. I spent a lot of time exploring. I did literally every single side quest and found all the demiguise statues. And all the items. And all the animals. All the mounts.
I do believe there was 60-80 side quests ? Something like that.
That’s how I spent 160 in the game.
I get that a lot of people don’t want Rowling to get any money as she is anti trans.
Rowling had nothing to do with the game aside from owning the IP.
No input or anything on the game.
I’m not here to defend her.
I will say though that a very large portion of things we love and that bring us happiness are tainted.
And we have to decide for ourselves if we can separate the art from the artist or not. And it’s a personal decision.
Examples. Walt Disney was antisemitic.
Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in wonderland was a pedo. Bill gates was a visitor of Epstein’s Island.(Creator of windows) A shit ton of actors and musicians are pro Israel Zionist. A lot of sports players have domestic battery charges. Alfred Hitchcock was a bad guy (me too situations).Speaking of. Harvey Weinstein was part of many many movie productions.
I’m not excusing any of these people nor their behaviors.
What I’m saying is. We all get to choose if we want to separate people from their work.
And some will and some won’t.
And I don’t think judging others just because they bought the Hogwarts game and love the Hp universe, is fair.
I’m certainly not ok with her statements on trans topics.However I’m not giving up something I love. I can separate her from it.
You too, likely still enjoy media by a shitty garbage human.
Cause there are a lot of them.
Elden Ring being 3rd and Baldur’s Gate 3 being tied for last is quite a surprise.
Yeah, Helldivers 2 made it on the list!
For Super Earth! o7
Palworld numbers are amazing.
Well at least one of those Switch Sports sales was a double buy by me because somehow the first digital copy I purchased, and played many times and put maybe 20 hours into golf, just decided to up and pretend I never bought it. One day it just told me I needed to buy it and my trial period was over. Despite having already bought it years before. I couldn’t find the proof of purchase email even though I had one for every other game. I emailed Nintendo, they said they had no record of my purchase even though they could clearly see dozens of hours played across multiple sports. I also have a video of my kid playing it like a year before this happened. I eventually just re bought it. It was honestly one of the weirdest and unsettling experiences of my life. Like a portion of my life was deleted and only I remembered. Even my brother was doubting me.
It’s crazy that I only own two of these games and they couldn’t be more different. Animal Crossing and Cyberpunk 2077.
I haven’t bought a single one of these. I’ve played It Takes Two with my brother over Parsec though. Where can I collect my hipster certificate?
My backlog is well over 5 years out. I haven’t gotten up to games from 2020+ yet. Lol.
I’m currently playing “Red Dead Redemption 2” , and “Psychonauts”.
Animal Crossing was a birthday gift. And technically Stadia refunded my money for Cyberpunk.
I own a lot of games and I own zero of these titles. 🤷♂️
Palworld is worth a shot
I see about 3 I’m either interested in or played. CP2077 is definitely worth getting into. As is Baldurs Gate 3 from what I know of it.
The .0 here just seems incorrect. They only appear have the first significant digit.
