At the end of July, Project Zomboid received a gargantuan update by the name of ‘Build 42’, a patch that had been in development for years. It was the largest update in the game’s illustrious history, and when it dropped, it pushed the player count to an all-time high.
The energy around Project Zomboid, often seen as one of the most challenging zombie survival games, persisted through September and beyond. In new data, it has been confirmed that, more than 13 years after its release, it entered the top-ten best-selling games on Steam and shipped a whopping 305,000 copies.
Project Zomboid Shows Insane Performance Years Later
Project Zomboid‘s Build 42 was nothing short of transformative. The major, stable update that arrived in the form of 42.20 was undoubtedly the most impactful in history.
It revamped crafting and the full tech tree; it introduced livestock and improved farming; it expanded the map area by almost double; it added more verticality, overhauled the base game engine, and integrated full, stable multiplayer mechanics.
In a month, the player count skyrocketed, the review sentiment improved (even though it was already stellar), and going into September and October, performance remained solid.
That success manifested in incredible sales figures, recorded way more than a decade after the game landed on Steam. In Ampere data revealed recently by The Game Business, it was revealed that Project Zomboid was the tenth-best-selling game on Steam through September, with 305,000 copies shipped.
It came in just behind Final Fantasy VII’s Rebirth and Intergrade, and around 100,000 sales behind Gamble with your Friends.
In terms of cross-platform comparison, Project Zomboid managed to sell more copies on Steam than GTA 5 sold on PlayStation, and it almost topped The Blood of Dawnwalker’s sales on XBOX. It managed to draw equal with Control: Resonant on PlayStation, too.
That’s phenomenal performance from a niche survival game more than 13 years into its lifecycle. At the time of writing, the persistence was nuts, and the game was drawing level with Rainbow Six Siege, Dead by Daylight, and War Thunder on Steam, and beating Delta Force, GTA 5, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Palworld.
Did you go back to Project Zomboid when Build 42.20 dropped? Let us know what you think about the game now on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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