I don't care if it's early access or not, this isn't a good sign

You do realize it's VERY normal for -any- new game to see a sharp drop off after the first few months as people deplete content relevent to them. We see this -every- league in PoE1, and every time people use it as a sign the league failed, when the reality is, the bulk of the players are just done with what they wanted for that league. While a small chunk (10 to 15%) keep no lifeing the game they love without end, and keep playing, pushing into ubers, T16 farms or new characters, that's not how the majority of players interact with games.

Even more so for an early access that has not yet gotten really chunky updates since it's release. People who went 'oh look a new game? Lets check it out' and players of PoE1 who went "HOLY HECK POE2?!" have both had their chance to fully deplete PoE2's EA of everything they might have wanted to. Heck even I took a break to do the Phrecia league since it'd be my only chance to monkey with it (and I was already deep into Maps in PoE2 running the grind treadmill).

I cannot stress that a 90% player loss in the first month of an EA is -Standard- for almost any game that's not the biggest triple AAA out there. Even a -MASSIVE- success like BG3 saw an 80% player loss within its first month. That is how games work. PoE2's actually held onto players better that I'd expect for an EA. For context, this Early Access is still seeing -double- the numbers of Deep Rock Galactic, a game with a pretty solid fanbase and about half that of Helldivers 2, a long running game with one of the most rabid fanbases I've seen in a while.

Oh, nice, another "the game will fail if our demands aren't met" thread?

Diablo IV running at 10k players now is a sign of bad times. That is a released game with an expansion. It had a whole 55k players at peak 5 months ago. This chart is actually amazing considering where we are at. What is really bad is that Diablo II resurrected has more players than D4. Yet, they refuse to do seasonal updates in D2R.

Nulled.

Welcome to live service APRGs? lol

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SphinxyII#6427 wrote:

Diablo IV running at 10k players now is a sign of bad times. That is a released game with an expansion. It had a whole 55k players at peak 5 months ago. This chart is actually amazing considering where we are at. What is really bad is that Diablo II resurrected has more players than D4. Yet, they refuse to do seasonal updates in D2R.

I think most people use the Blizzard launcher for diablo games? Definitely harder to judge those games on Steam. I played d2r until they just gave up on updating anything. Sad that they just dumped Mosaic on us and abandoned the game.

Huge drop offs are the normal for all games, as well as movies, books, etc., probably all entertainment.

I am curious to see how the numbers rebound after the first reset which I assume will be April 4th. It is not exactly a new season but the bump each new season is more telling. The end of EA is likely to see a monster spike. I have a feeling GGG is very happy with their numbers so far.

Marvel Rivals was released at about the same time and its still top 5 played on Steam. The diff is it has better "end game" atm. When POE2 has more end game the numbers will stay higher longer.

Just checked steam and the average player count for PoE 1 over the last month (Settlers I presume, but may include the current Phacia{?} event) is around 30k but currently is only just under 17,900 for the 24 hour peak.

So there are almost twice as many playing POE2.

I am in Australia and went to PoE for a while and honestly, Settlers is dead. Found it hard to progress due to lack of players to trade. So came back to PoE2.

the very gradual decline over 4 months is healthy. It didn't suddenly drop off because people thought game was bad (although there are many complaints.) I predict Dawn of the Hunt will show another big influx of players and similar very gradual decline until the next major patch.