DriveThruRPG numbers for 2022

For those who don't know, there is rarely a day that doesn't go by when somebody doesn't download a free copy of Blackmarsh from DriveThruRPG. Over 13,000 since its release in 2011.  Each order is accompanied by an order number.

To date, this has meant I had a Blackmarsh order come in on the January 1st. So starting around 2015, I have been tracking the Order # in a spreadsheet. 

One of my older posts doing this in 2015.

Another from two years ago.

The idea here is that by tracking the January 1st order number we can get a sense of the relative increase (or decrease) in DriveThruRPG sales from year to year. Because we don't know what order numbers are used for internally at DriveThru, we can't use them to determine the absolute number of sales. 

Now for this year's numbers.

As you can see aside from a pandemic-related boost in 2020, the # of orders has seen a slow increase since 2019. In contrast, 2017 to 2019 saw a marked rise in sales, almost doubling.

Finally here is a repeat of the month to month chart showing the effects of the Pandemic on DriveThru numbers.