CK3 added over 1.7 million players since 2024 and they love making a custom character
By Marco Wutz
It’s a good thing that we don’t actually celebrate the birthdays of our characters in Crusader Kings 3, because that sure would be another great way to get them murdered — but that’s impossible for the game itself, so we can safely congratulate everyone’s favorite medieval grand strategy RPG on its fifth anniversary.
To mark the occasion, developer and publisher Paradox Interactive has released a couple of statistics around the game, though these only cover the period since 2024. In that time, CK3 added over 1.7 million new players across all platforms, showcasing its unbroken popularity. Over 110 million hours of the game were played in that time with players creating more than 29.3 million custom characters. People sure love their self-insert protagonists, even if the likelihood of a ignoble, violent end is high.
Surprising absolutely no one because it's basically a prerequisite play Paradox games, CK3 players are greedy warmongers: The Stewardship (Wealth) Lifestyle stands at the top of the popularity ranking, followed by Martial (Strategy). Completing the podium is Martial (Chivalry), which one might call romantic, but we all know why it’s being picked so much: That attraction bonus is making seduction a whole lot easier.
Still, CK3 managed to get rejected around 4.9 million times since 2024 when trying to get in bed with someone… in the game, of course. While we don’t know the success rate of seductions, we can assume that a much greater number of actual attempts have been made. That high number of extramarital affairs might be the key to the low number of just 12,553 divorces taking place in this timeframe — well, either that or the ready availability of alternative means of getting divorced, Henry VIII-style.
On the more wholesome side, players adopted and pet over 3.6 million cats and dogs to reduce their stress. Relatable.
“Five years have gone by so fast,” commented game director Alexander Oltner. “We launched Crusader Kings 3 at the height of the Covid pandemic, so the last stages of development added an extra layer of pressure on the team. That the game has been such a success is testimony to both the hard work of my colleagues and the passion of the community at large.”
Later this year, CK3 will get the All Under Heaven DLC, which expands the title all the way over to the Pacific with special mechanics for countries like China and Japan and adds elements like natural disasters. CK3 has sold over four million times since release.
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