How are there such ridiculously high numbers in the final scoreboard

xcom-enemy-unknown

I just finished classic Ironman and the final scoreboard is weird:.

Classic Difficulty Mission Summary

The World average numbers shows about 146000 scientists/engineers. Same stuff for credits and few other values.

I mean, I'm sure someone sat there for a week and clicked "Mission" buttons for a month to get huge amounts of them from the council. But how come it's a 'world average'? Why are the numbers so high?

Classic Difficulty Mission Summary 2

Best Answer

The "World" scores are averages across an unknown number of players. However, the scores are not verified for legitimacy before Firaxis(Steam?) collects them for display.

Since it is possible to mod the game, including giving yourself egregiously high numbers of anything you desire, the World's "average" is affected, especially if Firaxis is using a simple mean, instead of the median.

In short: People hacked. Outliers mess up averages.