The Top 15 Best-Selling PC Games Of All Time

[DelroyMonjo]

Age of Empires series didn't make it? Age of Kings was pretty neat because of all the amateur developers making great scenarios for it.

 

[Mitche01]

I would have thought Doom would have been in here!

 

[unionoob]

How about Call of Duty series?
How about Heroes Might and Magic series?
How about CnC series like Red Alert?
How about Age of Empires series?

Maybe I am wrong but this list doesn't look too correct to me.

 

[jdw_swb]

This article is made redundant by the fact that digital sales are not counted.

 

[srgess]

Wow have over 15-25 millions users over time but its not first. OKAY and how come the sims across all platform and sims 2 count in the same chart...

 

[KelvinTy]

I am so surprise about SimCity 3000... and The Sims 2... and The Sims...
I always thought they were boring, simplified version of real life simulator that has stupid boundaries and insane rules...
I am also very surprised none of the Age of Empires made it into the chart.

 

[jamesedgeuk2000]

Cataclysm sold 11 million copies not 4.7, in may 2011 the were 11 million active WoW players (not including trials) and you needed a copy of Cataclysm to play the game properly.

 

[supall]

Not surprised that Blizzard made 4 of the slots. I was expecting to see at least one of the Bethesda Softworks titles or even one from the CnC series.

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]acku[/nom]I suppose I could have just made it 12 million, but we were looking at retail sales, not subscription figures cause that would really mess things up. Does 1 month of subscription = 1 sale? Not exactly. 1 month is like 15 bucks and a boxed game costs 50 odd bucks. That was why it was retail sales only. We should probably do a separate most popular MMORPGs list to cover that unique side of the gaming business.[/citation]
To play any MMO you need to purchase the game AND pay the subscription, so that 12million is really 12 million (-trial users who never really played past the trial to pay for the game).

At any rate, in a day and age where there is so much digital distribution this article really is kinda dumb (sorry, that was as constructive a word I could think of at the moment). This is not the '90s and a great many people do not pay retail, or buy at a retail store.

Still, I did enjoy the reminder of some of those games, especially Cossacks Europian Wars. That game was EPIC, and was one of the last games you could copy and give to your friends without dealing with all that peskey anti-piracy stuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__zpUpkg9TI

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]Article regarding Myst[/nom]It was the best-selling computer game of all time until The Sims was released nine years later[/citation]
This is not correct. It might be for PC (IBM AT compatible systems), but it's not the best selling computer game of all times. Nintendo hold that record.
In fact wii sports has a sales figure of over 100 million, and the mario franchise almost half a billion - I'm quite confident that at least one product has exceeded 6 million sales in that franchise. Hell even gta with its over 100 million franchise sales might have a gta 3 or 4 for pc that has hit 6 million - especially with those excessive sales numbers that steam just doesn't want to release.

 

[tmk221]

cs 1.6 sold over 40m of copies. Simply check the newest steam_id. It's 49 xxx xxx now, meaning there is over 49m of accounts in total.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]tmk221[/nom]cs 1.6 sold over 40m of copies. Simply check the newest steam_id. It's 49 xxx xxx now, meaning there is over 49m of accounts in total.[/citation]
by far not all steam accounts have cs

 

[Guest]

Lol....Warcraft has more subscribers than the #1 game. Before you can subscribe, you have to buy the full retail game. And the subscriber list doesn't count the millions of sold copies which are no longer subscribed either. Clearly should have been a wow win.

 

[jemm]

SimCity 3000 is the best! Age of Empire II also a great game, but not in the short list.

 

[ubercake]

Battlefield 3 is incredible (MW3 nowhere to be found, hmmm?). There really is nothing like it.

Sim City has been great since the 80s. I played the original in black, white, cyan, and magenta. Never graduated to the newer editions, but they look great.

Diablo 2 is great in its simplicity of play while offering a lot of suspenseful moments. It has a great storyline.

I burned a lot of time with the original Sims. It was very demanding of the hardware when it was released. Always took a long time to start the game. It was intriguing so I spent a lot of time with it.

 

[maxinexus]

You guyz forgot about Call of Duty MW3 with over 25 million copies sold. The game made more than a billion dollars.

 

[koogco]

If you do one on MMO's in general, you should probably get in touch with http://mmodata.blogspot.com/ they seem to know about such things.

 

[billybobser]

Not only does the list go up in order, it's hugely mislead and makes 0 sense.

I don't get how Cataclysm has outsold the original wow, given the original is a prerequisite to playing.

Something is wrong with this article.

 

[cjnlstntxs]

I was shocked to see Sim City 3000 and no Diablo 2 or even Original Everquest. Interesting

 

[cknobman]

This article is an epic fail for the simple fact that you listed Diablo II with 4 million copies sold when I bought a retail box that stated right on the front "Over 5 million copies sold"

LOL do better research next time.

 

[jeber99]

It's difficult to get all of the actual sales numbers from throughout the years.

12 million WoW subscribers (a couple of years ago) does equal at least 12 million copes of WoW sold, and that is most likely just retail and not digital distribution. WoW has not always been available digitally. 1 subscriber equals 1 copy of WoW, that is pretty easy to figure out. The WoW expansions require a copy of WoW to have been bought. Also, even if WoW numbers are dipping to around 10 million, it's quite possible since the game is 8 years old that there have been more than 12 million copies of WoW (not the expansions) sold over time, probably something closer to 14-18 million with digital distribution (without it is probably around the 12 million mark). You have to remember that not every person that bought the original WoW or any of the expansions stuck with the game to create the different 6/8/10/12 and now back down to 10ish million players worldwide subscribing figure, but they did purchase the original WoW.

The easiest way to put it for somebody to (hopefully) understand is that when WoW dips down to 4-6 million subscribers in say maybe a few years, does that mean only 4-6 million were ever sold of WoW over the past decade? No.

Warcraft III, W3 expansion, D2 expansion, SC expansion, Orange Box, and a few others probably at least eclipsed the 4 million mark.

I imagine it is also difficult to get actual sales numbers. I recommend putting an additional note stating to the best of your ability these are the numbers that you could find, they do not reflect all of the possible games and/or numbers sold throughout the past few decades.

 

[spookyman]

[citation][nom]ibigs[/nom]I wonder what the sales figures for the Civilization series are. I allways thought those were high on lists like this..[/citation]

Civilization was a big seller but most plays who played it where on college campuses and most of the time it was bootlegged.

 

[Guest]

I bewildered that you find this so confusing.

You have Cataclysm on the list. It is an expansion to WoW. Therefore, WoW must have more sales than Cataclysm. Furthermore, the other expansions BC and WotLK are also perquisites to Cataclysm, so they must be on the list also.

There was no digital distribution for any of the games up until Cataclysm.

I don't know why you're mentioning the cost of subscriptions, this is still about sales. It had 12 million active subscribers at one point, all of which must have bought at least the original game.

You also mentioned MMOs should be handled separately. I don't know in what definition they wouldn't be considered PC games, but even so, why did you include just Cataclysm then?

We're all scratching our heads here, this is really basic and we can't understand why you don't get it.

 

[spookyman]

What about the first Diablo?

I am surprised GTA is not on this list considering GTA 4 made over a 1/2 billion it was released.

 

[gam0reily]

Modern Warfare 2 not there? I thought it had record sales that year.