Sony accidentally reveals PS4 player counts

Sony's new feature, My PS4 Life, isn't just good for standing in awe at how many hours you've put into No Man's Sky. Through the ingenuity of some users, it's also become a way to determine how many total users certain titles have garnered since release.

A website called Gamstat has appeared with a method of extrapolating total users of a given game from the information provided by a user's rarest trophy aquired. Essentially, My PS4 Life will show a user the total number of users who have acquired the rarest trophy they possess. That, combined with the percentage of players can be used to determine a good estimated total users for a game. For example, as Gamestat explains:

"Say, 1,142,392 players earned the "Cradle" trophy in No Man's Sky. And on playstation.com they also reveal that 28,9% of all players got this trophy. Simple math: the total number of people who have played No Man's Sky on PS4 = 1,142,392 * 100% / 28,9% = 3,952,913."

The information can be acquired for any PlayStation 4 game provded you can see someone's rarest trophy, though trophies that are too rare (0.1 percent of players, for example) don't give a good estimate. The other caveat is that number of players who have earned a trophy was likely last updated between the end of November and beginning of December, so the trick doesn't work for newer games.

Gamestat has published a number of extrapolated player numbers on its website, including the following numbers of note (all numbers are global unless otherwise noted):

• Call of Duty: WWII - 24,600,000
• Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII - 9,230,000
• Detroit: Become Human - 2,440,000
• Fallout 76 - 407,000
• FIFA 18 - 32,500,000
• FIFA 19 - 12,500,000
• Fortnite - 16,200,000 (Europe, Australia only)
• Grand Theft Auto V - 51,700,000
• Minecraft - 25,600,000
• No Man's Sky - 3,950,000
• Overwatch - 10,200,000
• Red Dead Redemption 2 - 6,110,000
• Rocket League - 22,600,000