The UK's official PC games download chart, launched less than a year ago, "is dead," reports games industry magazine MCV. The chart was officially launched in May last year but there has been no data published by the compilers, UKIE and IPSOS, about PC games and DLC digital sales since last October.
Perhaps the idea was too ambitious as this digital PC games chart was heralded by UKIE as the "world's first official digital games chart using actual sales data from PC downloads and Expansion / DLC titles," at launch. Apparently the chart had been in beta testing for a year before that launch but obviously something didn't work out after the chart makers went live. At launch the charts were supposed to start by being published on a monthly basis with the aim of becoming weekly.
MCV reports that while publishers including Sega, EA, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Warner and 2K supplied data to the chart compilers some other prominent games makers including Activision and Bethesda didn't. Also making the chart compilation organisation's job even more difficult, online games distributors such as Steam and Green Man Gaming shared their sales data in their own ways, that made it tricky for the UK official chart makers to bring all the figures together correctly.
What will happen now? According to the report on this chart's demise, UKIE will put this project on hold and look to new ways to compile meaningful reports on the size of the PC download market. As mentioned at the launch of the ill-fated chart, digital sales are now so important to games companies both large and small. Comparative sales data in an official chart was said to be a "vital" tool to some independent games makers. For now games makers and industry observers will have to make do with the disparate mass of data that is available here and there.
