The Top 15 Best-Selling PC Games Of All Time

[zybch]

Why aren't minesweeper and solitaire from MS included here? EVERY copy of Windows sold since one of the 3.x versions has included these two games.

 

[Guest]

Where is Call of Duty!?!? MW3 only sold 6.5 million on launch day, but it's not on here...obviously a biased list.

 

[Guest]

That 5 millions for Battlefield 3 on PC is nonsense.

 

[RodolfoKSP]

Tomshardware a Part 2 Series would be cool 🙂

 

[Johnpombrio]

This list is definitely busted and should never have been posted. It is simply a list of large retail games sold through retail stores or by online purchases of hard copy games. It is simply too narrowly focused. As many, many posters have constantly commented, you cannot have 11 million people playing a game that requires a purchase to be made for the software before playing it for it not to count. This is an amateur's attempt at a post that he is not qualified to write. Amazing that a quality site like Tom's would let this get online.

 

[Guest]

Myst = most boring game I ever played. If I was in jail and the only options were Myst or doodling on the wall, I'd choose the latter.

 

[knowom]

I'm pretty damn confident the best selling PC game of all time is solitaire.

 

[Guest]

How is Minecraft on a list of retail sales?

 

[Deemo13]

I was expecting Age of Empires to be on here somewhere.

 

[sicom]

This article is very inaccurate. I have the Battle Chests for both Diablo II and Warcraft III sitting next to me, and they both claim right on the box to have sold over 7 million units worldwide, and these boxes are several years old (Diablo II had huge sale numbers when D3 was announced).

That said, it's interesting to see Cossacks: European Wars listed. I hadn't even heard of the game. Makes me wonder what I missed.

 

[billcat479]

Wow, what kind of rules did you dig up to come up with that list? I know it's obvious you've not been around that many years and take god knows what to pick that list but if you try to go by how many were sold you started off on the wrong foot right off. PC's and Mac's and even Atari and Commodore put out computers a long time ago with better games like Pacman, Asteroids, donkey-kong ect that people put unknown amounts of quarters in at Arcades and bars and with those very early computers. You need to go off of the percent numbers per computer, not total numbers.
You have to look at it kind of like this, if in 1990 say there were 1000 computers and that year a game came out that sold 999 of one game you would say that this game was a all time favorite because the total numbers said people thought this one was so good that the highest percent of computer user's bought it. It doesn't mean 999 total was sold any more than taking todays numbers where there are a whole WHOLE lot more home computers in use can beat that number even selling a totally horrible game!!! Base numbers do not work with this. That much is very easy to see.
I've seen a whole lot better 4k byte games than you put up on that list. Yes, some were good games but only 1 of those I'd say rate the top ten list of all time. You didn't really do much of any research in this one at all did you?
I'd put Pacman above all the games you listed here. One person added flight sim as one and could be very correct as it was a long running popular and a good game though it was more sim than game it was still very popular and had a long run life which beat the hell out of most of those that were picked. Homeworld won ton's of awards and was better than those games in so many ways, fun appeal, new easy to play with a unique storyline and long term playability.
Even a slow to pick up on game called Independance War (I-War) was a game that had a huge long term following as did the text adventure games that gave the computer world of gaming a big kick start. The Ultima game series is up there, The Might and Magic games played a Major role that you see in Skyrim today and not one of those were up there? No, you did not do your homework at all. Scrap this one and do some thinking and come back with some games that really do rate more serious consideration. Because these games except for the sim game aren't even in the top 100. Heck, I'd give Donky Kong a LOT higher rating than any of those. Sales numbers alone is not any way to base top games because that is a changing number all the time and is more based on population and how many people have computers as of today and has little or nothing to do with what makes a game tops in fun, imagination, and lastly eye candy which should always come in last because it's all about how fun the game is that makes it a game in the first place. Eye candy sad to say has been getting way to much consideration in reviews these days so it takes a few years before you can tell if that one game is really a good game by it's staying power and how many people really had a good time with it. There are so many early games that beat the pants off of anything put out today for how long they stayed popular and people kept playing them and got a fun number that compared to that list those old games really put them in the gutter. Start again and try harder to get it even half right ok???
These were supposed to be the top games of all time right? It would seem your time scale was very small and biased towards what I can't even start to guess where you dug up that list.
Please do not EVER become a art critic ok?

 

[eadthem]

I can explain WOW,

Free Trials, If you play the free trial, you buy a digital copy.

Everyone I know who has played wow started in a free trial, so i can understand how there would be very few boxed copy's of the original wow.

 

[__-_-_-__]

imo TETRIS is the most sold ever!

 

[back_by_demand]

Seeing as digital distribution is not counted, this is hardly an accurate article, it is however interesting as a reference point and likely most of the top 10 will be there or thereabouts, but I am sure there is room for a few new entries in the top 10

I especially like the fact that older games can get a new lease of life on sale weekends (Xcom being a big winner here) so some of the classic games like Half Life 1 will get a massive boost from their initial sales as they are no longer sold in retail stores, I consider this like the Beatles going on iTunes, then hitting millions of new sales 50 years after they were first released.

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]msidbdwreaq[/nom]Where is Call of Duty!?!? MW3 only sold 6.5 million on launch day, but it's not on here...obviously a biased list.[/citation]
A lot of them would have been digital download, SHHHHH, we aren't allowed to talk about it.....

 

[matter37]

Considering how fast and popular minecraft is getting I would not be surprised if it will take the #1 spot soon

 

[maako]

I wanted to comment on this article, but after reading many of the comment I realized that my case has already been presented and proven.
To be honest, the comments of this article were much more interesting than the article it self.
I am sorry, but that is how I feel.

 

[Shahal]

[citation][nom]weatherdude[/nom]Ahh... I love the title picture.I've played a few of these games. The Sims I wasted too much time with. Starcraft I did not even legitimately beat. SimCity 3000 I invested plenty of time into. The unlimited version at least.Anyways the picture for SimCity 3000 doesn't come from it. It looks like it comes from something much newer such as maybe SimCity 4 (never played don't know) or that yet-to-be released one.[/citation]

As someone who's played every Sim City game fairly religiously and have a separate computer specifically for Sim City 4 because SC4 doesn't work well on Windows 7, I can assure you that's Sim City 3000. The UI is a dead giveaway.

 

[hellcatjr]

My only complaint is that there are sequels on here, like the Sims one and the Sims 2, half-life and half-life 2. That is kind of silly, the games should be considered as a collective whole, instead of simply wasting 4 slots - we could have had 2 other games as well.

Some games that come to mind that failed to be mentioned were;

Everquest or Lineage - pioneers of MMOs, EQ was the first MMO to have a million + players.

Baulders Gate / Neverwinter Nights / Icewind Dale - it is amazing that not a single one of these hit the list...

Fallout

The Elder Scrolls - Daggerfall / Morrowind / Oblivion / Skyrim

Roller Coaster Tycoon or Theme Park

Lemmings

Descent

Need for Speed

Mechwarrior

I mean, I could keep going...

IMO this article paid lip service to current dead head gamers and big publishers...

 

[joeman99]

PC or Windows?

 

[bobbank]

You have made an error with your Cataclysm figure for sure.

It sold 4.7 million copies in the first month. Clearly its total sales is somewhere north of that. Given that it still has about 10 million subscribers, I would say it is a lot higher. Those figures wouldn't have even captures the full impact of holiday sales for year 1. 😵

 

[HVDynamo]

One thing I could see being improved is the 'Read more' link at the bottom of the descriptive text. Most times it would simply uncover the last sentence which still left a lot of grey space below it. Why do we have to click that extra link to display what there is already plenty of room to see. Just my thoughts.

 

[LORD_ORION]

The proportion of games sold to PCs in the world is kind of important. Selling 1 million units today is not nearly as impressive as it was in 1988. *waves at Thexder*

Also, isn't Guild Wars supposed to be on this list?

 

[The Halo Don]

Starcraft 2

 

[Guest]

Doom and Doom 2 aren't on the list because their primary sales model was shareware. But All Your History Are Belong to Us estimated ~10 mil by today, if I remember correctly, also don't recall if that includes ports. Regardless it is amazing for a game with just a fraction of the market size of today.