Report Highlights Counter Strike: Global Offensive Handily Snipes Fallout 4 In 2015 Steam Game Sales

2015 was a massive year for gaming, with a handful of games being deserving of "Game of the Year" awards. Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt are two top-rated titles that will jump to most people's minds, although there are others that have proven to be quite popular as well, such as Rocket League. And speaking of Rocket League, would you believe that it sold almost twice as many copies as CD Projekt RED's Witcher 3?

We find this out with the help of stats aggregator SteamSpy, and Medium, which decided to compile the data. SteamSpy works by tracking game activations on Steam, and while it's impossible for its numbers to be 100% correct, it's at least going to be close.

So, what was the best-selling game on Steam worldwide during 2015? Fallout 4? Nope! The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt? Not even close. Believe it or not, the best-selling game on Steam during 2015 is a game that came out in the fall of 2012: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Does Valve know what it's doing, or what?

To be fair to the top-dollar games, Valve puts Global Offensive on sale (and it's cheap!) more often than most of us boot up our computers, so it goes without saying that it automatically has a great chance of selling well. But "selling well" is an understatement: it sold a staggering 5.6 million copies in 2015 alone - and that's just since SteamSpy began tracking the activations in April. Grand Theft Auto V, which many were eagerly awaiting on a PC release for, sold 3.6 million. I think Rockstar will be pleased with that extra few hundred million in its pockets.

Other games not released this year that top the list include Left 4 Dead 2, Garry's Mod, Terraria, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and Borderlands 2. ARK: Survival Evolved and Rocket League became out-of-nowhere sensations, selling about 2 million copies a piece. That's especially notable for ARK as it's still an "Early Access" title, with the final release scheduled for next summer.

Interestingly, when more granular results are looked at, some definite trends can be seen. If we consider just US sales, Global Offensive slots in at #3, but still sold more copies than any other country. Fallout 4 instead tops the US charts, with 968,000 copies sold, while GTA V hit #2, with 777,000.

If there's one definite trend to take note of, it's that if an indie game strikes the right chord with people, a la Terraria, it has the chance to sell well for quite some time. That game in particular came out in 2011 and still sold over 1 million copies in 2015. That's some enviable success, to be sure.