Civilization 7 got off to a rough start when it dropped earlier this year: Systemic changes, particularly the addition of “ages,” proved deeply divisive, but there was also a slew of more basic problems with bugs, AI issues, and a widely-disliked UI. It remains stuck with a “mixed” user rating on Steam, and concurrent player numbers on the platform lag well behind not just Civilization 6, but the 15-year-old Civ 5 too.
Despite those many troubles, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says all is well, telling IGN that the “lifetime value” of Civilization 7 remains pretty much where it was expected to be right from the start.
“I think the key thing is that Civ has always been a slow burn. It’s always been a title that had—I’m not really a big believer in the long tail theory of the entertainment business—but Civ is an example of that theory. And right now our projections for the lifetime value of the title are very consistent with our initial expectations for the title.
“So while we were off to a slow start and while we have had to make changes—and there are more changes coming—I feel like consumer uptake is better and better and we feel really good about the title. I think over time it’s going to take its place in its Civilization pantheon in a very successful, credible way.”
A long tail, simply put, is a measure of a product’s success (typically sales) in the weeks, months, and years after its initial release. A game with a long tail can become successful even if it’s not an immediate hit, thanks to continued post-release sales often driven by word of mouth and ongoing improvements.
And Zelnick isn’t kidding when he says he’s not a big believer in the whole thing: In 2024, Take-Two sold publishing label Private Division because that’s the kind of games it makes, and that’s not the kind of games Take-Two wants: “We’re not the long tail company. We are top-10 hit makers around here.”
(I would be remiss if I did not note the irony of Zelnick having the wheel of Grand Theft Auto, one of the most famously long-tailed game series of all time. Take-Two reported in its Q1 2026 earnings report that the GTA franchise has now sold nearly 455 million units, an increase of roughly five million over the previous quarterly report.)
The Civilization series is similarly durable, albeit on a much smaller scale, but Civ 7 is in a deep hole, encapsulated in this image courtesy of SteamDB:
The concurrent player count numbers are an obvious issue, but the very far-right of the graph above may be even more worrying. While Civ 6 numbers have levelled off since the Civ 7-driven dropoff, and even bounced back somewhat, Civ 7’s numbers are still in decline. Updates and improvements to Civilization 7 will continue to roll in, but with Civ 6 looming over it, I have to wonder whether getting into “good enough” shape will be good enough.
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