Numbers: we've reached the lowest playerbase since launch

[Jakal]

people wanna play monster hunter, you got a problem with that saucy duckling?

[KKND2]

i’ve hit inventory cap, cant open anymore boxes. but still having fun because i can’t find another game with gameplay like this c:

[Yzneftamz]

Okay, I finally did a bit of research of my own: https://steamcharts.com/cmp/261640,552500,218620,49520#All
A comparison between Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, PAYDAY 2 and Vermintide 2. All are first-person, co-op games. Both Borderlands games have a better potential for single-player action and an actual plot, but co-op is still a huge draw for them. PAYDAY 2 is, like Vermintide, completely focused on co-op, with similar mission structure to VT. PAYDAY is a shooter, though. Similar enough, I think, to draw comparisons, and ones I’m familiar with.

All show a steep drop in players soon after launch. Borderlands 2 dropped to a fifth of its players in two months, similar drop and timeframe for PAYDAY 2. Same timeframe caused an even steeper drop (to a sixth) for the Pre-Sequel, and yet deeper (to about seventh) for VT2. These are all for peak players, though. Digging a bit deeper to see the averages shows even more similar curves, with only PAYDAY 2 as a real outlier.

After that initial drop, all games wobble a bit, likely with updates, DLCs and possibly sales. Both Borderlands games steady up after those end (PAYDAY doesn’t because its updates still haven’t ended, so it keeps fluctuating), BL2 steadying at (estimated) 10-15% of its starting average, and Pre-Sequel at less than 5%. We’re not even close to the end of updates here, so fluctuation is to be expected, but it seems the average has declined every month. We’ll see what happens when the next major update rolls out…

I’ll let you all draw your own conclusions from this comparison, but I gather we’ve had it (for now, at least) worse than some, but better than others, weighing on the worse side. I could’ve tossed in Payday: The Heist’s and VT1’s stats too, but it seems that Steamcharts doesn’t support (at least easily) comparisons between more than four games.

If there is something to worry about (in opinion of FS and its management), I think major updates and their promotion could help. Those updates can’t really be hurried, though, as people can only do so much work. And don’t suggest bringing in more employees; that would at first only slow down things even more. As for myself, I’ll wait for the next updates and see what happens then.

And as a last word, a game is as dead as the players make it. If you help knitting the community together and finding new friends here, it won’t die completely. If you keep fearmongering and repeating the same stuff about the game dying or being dead, more people will believe that and leave (and not even start playing in the first place).