this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
400 points (95.7% liked)
PC Gaming
8088 readers
736 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean, Harry Potter was the biggest selling game last year, and that has also lost 97% of it's players.
Not everything is meant to be played forever. I think Skyrim was a one-off tbh.
That’s another exceptionally boring game, though.
Just checking some random games:
Sekiro is currently sitting at 92% players lost from its peak after five years
Spiritfarer is at 80%
Hollow Knight has only lost 63% of players
Witcher 3 also lost 80%, and actually has a larger active player base (in number of players, not proportionally) right at this moment than HL, despite being years older and peaking significantly lower
Big tentpole releases are likely to have a higher peak though, just for the week one FOMO.
Not defending Starfield because by all accounts it is exceptionally average in all areas, just that losing a lot of players from peak is not particularly unexpected.
Kind of feel sorry for those that paid for it on Steam, because it's the very poster child for a trial month of GamePass.
Witcher 3 had a pretty big update not too long ago though
There hasn’t really been a single point since the game released almost nine years ago where its player count has dropped below current levels (20-40k active players). There was a huge boost with the update but it’s back to normal levels now. Can check steamdb for yourself to confirm
As I understand it, Starfield was supposed to be played for a long time. They literally made the game loop for this reason.
You finish the game by "going to a new universe" and starting over.