Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of most-played video games by player count


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Star  Mississippi  18:00, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

List of most-played video games by player count

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Like the List of fastest-selling products, this list makes apples-to-oranges comparisons between fundamentally different and incompatible measures. Downloads =/= registered accounts =/= daily/monthly active users =/= owners on Steam =/= retail sales. Some of these are time based and change from month to month (do you pick the highest ever point?). Some of these are trivial (it takes no effort to download and never launch a game and some companies have been known to puff their download numbers with bot accounts). Every company has a slightly different definition for a valid "player count", which is optimized to make them look good. Unlike "highest-selling" games which is tracked by independent auditors, I don't know that a true and validly sourced "list of most-played games" is possible, given the state of reporting on this topic in the games industry.

There is also the separate issue that this article was heavily edited by Maestro2016 (aka Jagged 85), who is notorious for misrepresenting and often outright falsifying sources. Any conclusion to this AFD should recommend an action with respect to this, whether that's draftifying until his contributions are verified/stripped out, or WP:TNT, or another solution. Axem Titanium (talk) 17:42, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Video games and Lists. Axem Titanium (talk) 17:42, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete unmaintainable list of questionable encyclopedic value. I don't think TNT is right, nor any other ATD: this is simply not a list Wikipedia should be trying to have and maintain. Jclemens (talk) 18:16, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete This doesn't seem particularly encyclopedic - accounts are often faked and so sheer numbers of accounts means little, nor does it indicate real-life impact. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 19:13, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete - pretty much per nom. This is a list of statistics sorted by their face value even though they are measuring different things, and are largely self-published with promotional intent and probably impossible to source independently. It's like a list of tall buildings where some are measured in feet and others in metres, and some are measured from ground level while others include basements, and some are given as elevation above sea level instead, although at least in those cases we could probably convert between them, but then the list is also ranked so that a 1750-ft building is "taller" than one measured at 875m. Also the heights aren't measured, we just take the builders' word for it. It just doesn't work as an encyclopedic list. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:11, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Wow that's a great analogy. Wish I had thought to put it that way! Axem Titanium (talk) 21:01, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete: This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't a "list of video games with concurrent users", or something that was really citable, but right now we've got an article with lists of amounts from ten years ago, and some from yesterday.  Lee Vilenski  (talk • contribs) 22:13, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete per Ivanvector. Sergecross73   msg me  00:38, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete' Downloads, registered accounts and Steam users are three different things. Most downloaded games maybe could be one list, but there's really no way to filter out bot downloads, or multiple downloads by the same user (plays game, deletes game, download again, plays again). The most "keepable" stats are probably the ones for Steam users, which could just be a few lines in that article. This is a synthesis of different things, mushed together into a mess. Oaktree b (talk) 02:19, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete per Ivanvector. Timur9008 (talk) 14:04, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep but trim to only F2P games, as player count is the standard method of valuating the size of an F2P game. This is a standard used in most sources, and the problem of editors adding in non-F2P games is the problem, not the metric. --M asem (t) 22:43, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete per Ivanvector. No indication that this can be turned into something with encyclopedic value. Nigej (talk) 09:57, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete per Ivanvector. This is unreliable and impossible to compare accurately. It doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Shooterwalker (talk) 02:06, 13 April 2023 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.