This Russian fishing sim is bizarrely popular on Steam but players hate the monetisation, and to be fair it has a $2000 microtransaction

I hadn't heard of Russian Fishing 4 until PCG's Wes Fenlon noticed it was weirdly popular on Steam. The game's been available since 2018, launching on Steam in November 2021, and since then it's steadily built a considerable audience over time: per SteamDB's three year charts, it was pulling in around 7,000 concurrent players after launch, and three years later averages just over 20,000 concurrent players every day.

There are currently 21,500 people playing Russian Fishing 4, and nine days ago it hit its all-time peak of 25,352 players. Bear in mind it's also available directly from the developer, so Steam's only a portion of the playerbase, and we're talking about one very popular fishing game.

The obvious question is why, and one straightforward and boring answer is that, with some very big caveats, Russian Fishing 4 is a pretty great fishing simulation. I downloaded it on Steam this morning and played through the tutorial before going for a spot of proper fishing, and the game has a lovely peaceful atmosphere, relatively straightforward mechanics, and for the most part looks great.

One especially nice touch is that, while you're fishing away, other players' catches pop up in realtime in the lower left of the screen. This does inspire some angling envy, but it's a nice distraction while you're waiting for a bite.

I have to say that I did only seem to catch carp and roaches, but that may just be because I'm fishing at a low level. And here comes the big caveat, and one of the reasons Russian Fishing 4 and its community is quite interesting: this is one of those free-to-play games that seriously tries to nickel-and-dime you.

The pace of progression here is monotonously slow, and the grind is absolutely brutal. You sell the fish you catch to (eventually) afford better equipment to catch bigger fish, and level up at a snail's pace (which is annoying because you can't visit certain spots in the game to fish unless you're a particular level). The actual fishing is fun: the gameplay loop built around it is why "free-to-play" makes so many players groan.

But naturally help is at hand. Russian Fishing 4 is monetised by a Premium membership tier, which basically makes the game work properly. Among other things, Premium grants a 100% bonus to experience with every fish caught, increases the chance of your crafting and fishing skills improving, and unlocks a bunch of other basic functionality that makes the game much more pleasant to play.

Appropriately enough, there's a catch. Premium membership is pretty expensive: three days of it will set you back $3.50, while a month is $15. I was also amazed that the options kept getting larger and larger. 90 days for $40? OK. 360 days for $130? You do you.

But then you see the "lifetime subscription" and Russian Fishing 4 just straight-up asks for $2,000. Two grand! I wonder if it'll carry over to Russian Fishing 5 (answer: nyet).

This side of Russian Fishing 4 is why, despite being a good fishing sim and clearly attracting a lot of would-be anglers, the Steam reviews sit firmly on "mixed" and there's two through-lines to nearly all the negative ones. They're either about the ponderous grind and overbearing monetisation, or they're from Chinese players.

I don't know why, but recently Chinese players seem to have taken against Russian Fishing 4 in a big way. The reasons that their reviews give are slightly mixed, but it's a cocktail of being banned for cheating (erroneously, they claim), an apparent lack of fish, and that old favourite, "greedy devs."

"To this day I don't understand what the cheating programme is, and he never explained it when I consulted the official, he was very arrogant," writes Mage (via machine translation). "If you want to play this game, please keep your computer like a newborn, do not try any uncommon programmes. This is the first time in my gaming career that I have been banned, thank you for all the nagging."

"I thought it was interesting at first, but now I think this game is a complete waste of my time," says QMX (via machine translation). "Are there any fish in this lake? I stand there all day and never catch any fish. The missions are disgusting and pure torture."

Finally,, I had to include this review from a Russian comrade, because it just made me wonder what on Earth happened while they were playing:

"After this shit," says Sanyapyts, "friends become bastards."

Russian Fishing 4 is an odd contemporary phenomenon. There's no doubt it's a good game, and many of the positive reviews reckon it's the best fishing sim on the market even with the monetisation. But that monetisation is so poorly implemented from the player perspective that it does seem to ultimately turn people off, and make them resent the game: it's really notable how many of the negative reviews have several hundred hours on record.

Not that this is likely to bother the developers too much: Russian Fishing 4 is clearly a big success and, even seven years after release, it is continuing to attract and hold the attention of a huge audience. I probably won't return to it—more of a Get Bass man—but there are plenty who do. And hey, if the monetisation bothers you that much? Just check down the side of the couch for a spare two grand.