The Top 15 Best-Selling PC Games Of All Time

[zak_mckraken]

Are we witnessing a rape sale in The Sims 2??

I tend to agree with the titles in the articles. However, the numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt since digital sales aren't counted, and they're often above physical sales in modern PC games. Also, PCs are more accessible (they cost less) then than they were in the 90's, thus more people may or may not buy games.

Titles I'm surprised haven't made the list : Doom, Civilization, Age of Empires, Worms, Unreal Tournament.

 

[GhosT94]

i thought Call of Duty 'd be here

 

[reyshan]

[citation][nom]maxinexus[/nom]You guyz forgot about Call of Duty MW3 with over 25 million copies sold. The game made more than a billion dollars.[/citation]
PC only

[citation][nom]gam0reily[/nom]Modern Warfare 2 not there? I thought it had record sales that year.[/citation]
Read the title before commenting. PC only

[citation][nom]GhosT94[/nom]i thought Call of Duty 'd be here[/citation]
I don't think the cod1 or cod2 ever touched any of these games but they were great until cod4

 

[supall]

Modern Warfare 2 & 3, and GTA are console games first and were designed for console games first. They shouldn't be anywhere near this list.

 

[alvine]

ahh Cossacks i got a nostalgia moment 😀

 

[andyman30]

Cant tell you how happy I am that I'm not seeing MW3 on here, lets me know theres hope after all.

 

[jaber2]

Myst? we gave those away when we sold any pc back then

 

[Guest]

Battlefield 3 is a great looking game, but I'm sorry I paid $60. From now on, I'll wait for a sale before getting new games, especially if they cost $60 (or more).

 

[gondor]

One of them looks like SimCity and the other like Starcraft. If it wasn't for Myst's title I wouldn't recognize any of those. Perhaps you should give titles to your pictorial as it doesn't make much sense now ?

 

[cTs Corvette]

[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]

Yes, but you're forgetting the fact that Steam has 2 separate Steam ID's for each number-STEAM_0:0:49xxxxxx and STEAM_0:1:49xxxxxx So in reality, there are almost 100 million Steam accounts. But that doesn't mean 100 million people have CS, lol.

 

[Bloob]

Should have made the figures relative to market size. Selling 5 million now is 100 times easier than selling 5 million 15 years ago.

 

[darasen]

Regarding WoW on the sales chart: It is entirely possible for the numbers to be accurate.

Remember it has been stated the numbers only include boxes sold.
The sales figures likely do not include things like the battle chests where one can purchase the game and expansions in one box at a discounted rate. Wow has ran "Recruit a friend"promotions that allowed one to start a new WoW subscription with out purchasing a box. They sold (still sale?) Demo CD's of the game, I am not sure if then subscribing required a boxed purchase or not.

I also do not know if this list is U.S. sales or world wide. I also do not know how WoW was sold and promoted over seas (especially Asia) where many of the claimed 12 million subscribers are.

 

[zanny]

[citation][nom]darasen[/nom]Regarding WoW on the sales chart: It is entirely possible for the numbers to be accurate. Remember it has been stated the numbers only include boxes sold.The sales figures likely do not include things like the battle chests where one can purchase the game and expansions in one box at a discounted rate. Wow has ran "Recruit a friend"promotions that allowed one to start a new WoW subscription with out purchasing a box. They sold (still sale?) Demo CD's of the game, I am not sure if then subscribing required a boxed purchase or not. I also do not know if this list is U.S. sales or world wide. I also do not know how WoW was sold and promoted over seas (especially Asia) where many of the claimed 12 million subscribers are.[/citation]

It can't be accurate, because WoW must have at least 12 million people that purchased it at its peak. In Asian countries, it is bought either digitally or boxed like almost any other game.

I can understand the individual expansions totaling less than the total playerbase during their peaks, because some crazy people might not have 'upgraded'. But honestly, that number cant be more than 1 in a hundred people, I do not know a single person anywhere that actively subscribed to WoW without buying the latest expansion.

At least 20 million people have, by some means, purchased the base game, be it bundled or not. They might have been subscribed at different times, but there is still no way to get base WoW without buying a boxed copy of some version of it (I think they just recently made base + BC included in WOTLK recently).

So for the peak 12 million subs, over an 8 year time frame, there must have been a lot of subscriber turnover at some point. So 20 million is a conservative estimate.

 

[sp0nger]

Thank you so so much tomshardware, from the bottem of my heart, for not including call of duty modern warefare in this list. This is why i will always respect you even more than the sites i go to directly for video game news.

 

[hfitch]

I understand your conclusion of retail sale vs digital distribution but the simple fact is. Retail or not World of Warcraft from Vanilla days to cataclysm has sold upward of 12 million copies 4 times. The subscription base of 11 million accounts. This is why every game company in the world is trying to overthrown the king of mmo World of WArcraft. None has come close not even Star Warsx2.

 

[youssef 2010]

PLEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEE, get rid of the read more button

 

[gm0n3y]

A couple of things. First, I didn't realize that you could even buy Counter Strike. I haven't played it since the year it came out, but at the time it was a free mod. Second, its really sad to see that The Sims sold so many copies. Those are really terrible games.

I thought that COD4 (the last decent COD game IMO) might have been on the list as it was huge when it came out. No CIV games in the list either? They have always been one of the staples of PC gaming. And no Elder Scrolls? I guess with digital downloads it's hard to count the sales of Skyrim (everyone I know that bought the game bought the digital version).

With digital sales not being included new games may never break the sales records. Similar to how CD sales figures will never be broken again since most people no longer buy CDs.

 

[triclops41]

This article should be called the Will Wright article

 

[robochump]

Imagine what the copies sold #s would be if many of these games were not pirated!?! Diablo III will also crack the top 10 and it is amazing how successful Blizzard is in such a fickle market.

 

[rozz]

[citation][nom]builder4[/nom]That first picture would have been better suited to the iPad review."It's exactly the same as the iPad 2 except for the screen, but is heavier, thicker, runs hotter, has reduced battery life...""Shut up and take my money!"[/citation]

I think you misinterpret the meme "shut up and take my money".. It is involves a product that is so amazing and GOOD that you rather them not tell you the features of the product and just sell it to you immediately. Hence these awesome games.. NOT the new iPad...

 

[pacioli]

I play WoW, and although not all the accounts I have purchased are currently active I still had to purchase a retail copy in order to open each account. I have purchased 6 copies of vanilla WoW. Four of those accounts are currently active - Wife, son, self, and brother -in law. Two accounts are inactive (Sister and an account I opened to get a mount)
12 million subscribers at the peak of WoW means 12 million people bought a copy of WoW. You can't subscribe without purchasing a copy of the game. Online downloadable copies are a very new thing for Blizzard. Most were certainly purchased in a retail setting. I know all but one of the copies of the game I purchased was from a retail store.
Another point, the amount of subscribers at the peak of WoW does not represent the total number of copies of WoW that had been purchased. It just means that there were 12 million active accounts. The real number of copies of WoW purchased could be much greater as some people that started playing WoW have quit... But they still purchased a full copy of the game!

 

[bin1127]

Cossack is a best selling game? I remember if I clicked my troops to the right and then they will subsequently disperse to the left. it was probably someone's highschool project.

 

[jktz122]

whatever happened to the civilization series?

 

[Evan20x]

That's scary. I watched that exact episode of Futurama about 45 mins ago.

In the Information Technology class in high school we would play Counter Strike and Diablo II all the time. Those was some good times. Had like 8 computers setup all on LAN going at it on CS.

Played Sims on PS2. Also very good times on there.

And who aint played wow? 😀

 

[kage_a]

If Cataclysm is on here why isn't vanilla? Everyone who bought Cataclysm had to buy vanilla WoW. We know that WoW had 12/m subscribers in Nov of 2010 (pre-Cataclysm) meaning it would be the best selling game of all time by almost double by now, if not far higher. Further, Wrath would have sold 12/m copies by then as well, and BC. So, just combine them.