A bumper harvest for Farming Simulator 17

EU subsidies may soon be coming to an end for actual UK farmers but the agricultural sector is booming in the evergreen land of simulation, with Focus Home Interactive having just announced its recent release, Farming Simulator 17, has sold 1m copies.

Released on the 25th of October, the title went straight into the charts in 5th position in the UK physical retail charts. That’s pretty impressive for what could be considered a niche title – although that idea is somewhat undermined by the availability of both PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game, as well as the traditionally-more-popular PC version of the sim title.

The PC version ranked third in the global Steam top 10 on its week of release. Since then it has gone on to sell an impressive 220,000 copies on that platform alone, ranking as one of the top-played titles on the service and with over 90% positive reviews.

Focus Home Interactive have further clarified those figures saying that the PC version makes up half the total sales figures and that half of those sales were made instore – leaving Steam to tidy up the vast majority of what was sold online.

The previous version of the game was available on legacy consoles as well, but the dropping of the Xbox 360 and PS3 SKUs doesn’t seemed to have harmed sales; that makes the game a rare success story in what has otherwise been a concerning Christmas season.

"Reaching one million players in such a short amount of time is simply amazing. It makes us very happy to see that Farming Simulator 17 is being received so well after all the work we’ve put in the game and the additional people we brought on board to make our largest project ever come to life,” said Thomas Frey, Creative Director GIANTS Software.In our publisher Focus Home Interactive, we have a great partner who fully supports our vision of creating a game that lives up to the expectations of our passionate community throughout all stages of development and release, which led to this success," he continued.

That all means there’s a lot of virtual farmers out there, mainly in Europe, with Germany leading the field, where it hit number one in the physical charts on release.

"Farming Simulator was always a game for fans, but with Farming Simulator 17 it has expanded into a whole new experience for a wide audience, who needed to be offered new things in video games. Existing fans of the series are already impressed by the improvements and its amazing content. As for newcomers to the series, they discover a really addictive and rewarding title," said Cdric Lagarrigue, President of Focus Home Interactive.