We lost 70% of our player base half a year in

[Ransu]

IIRC, Lucky Bancho was actually referring to the Steam figures as a point of concern as well during the last census. We'll likely never get official numbers to work with, unfortunately, though I do get the impression that things are a little shaky lately.

Eh, I don't really think its an issue. Steam numbers have more or less gone back to the normal peaks after the influx of the WoW "exodus" (lets be real, a lot of WoW players went back to WoW despite all the problems lol). I'd say even if things are "shaky" the population is clearly significantly higher still than the HW/SB days.

You posted a screenshot as evidence and you're not even reading it correctly.

First off, you're looking at peak, and not average. It's not a 70% decrease, it's actually about half as much as it was at expansion launch, or about the same as the month before the expansion launched.
Expansion came out in December, which caused the population to increase by 108%, or doubled, from the previous month.
Population decreases over the next few months as people finish the story and what content is available so they either take a break or log on less often.
6.1 releases in April and population jumps back up 40%.
Population stays around the same in May due to new Ultimate fight.

This. Players like me are still playing, but only log in during raid nights atm so steam statistics would still show as a drop because I'm not active in the game as often as I was during EW launch.

And as you say, people tend to be unable to read steamcharts correctly due to how the site scrapes data in specific intervals. So for those wondering, the "# players playing 15 minutes ago" is different people from the "# playing 10 hours later" with some small overlaps. So just because the "peak" of concurrent players is 40k, doesn't mean there's only 40k players on steam. A lot of people unfortunately misconstrue those statistics in such a manner.

[Lauront]

Dang, were they? That's kind of a shame, I haven't checked last census.

And yeah, SE would never give up those numbers even if you tried to pry them from their dead hands. It's definitely felt "not as alive" lately, but still "alive", certainly not dead, dying, and on the way out like the OP is implying lol. At least not anytime soon.

He basically said that the figures are static in nature - what they represent is distinctive character activity meeting its criteria in the time frame the survey is undertaken and not its current figures. Other than the steam figures, there's no real live indicator of these.

[Illmaeran]

I wasn't around for SB-era XIV, but wasn't the population lower than it is these days, despite the hype for this game dying?

Yes. Even in ARR the game was still profitable. Going to ffxivcensus.com (an English language site) in July of 2016, there were 231787 active players worldwide whereas in January 2022 there were 838285 active characters, where "active" was defined as having certain items or mounts that indicate finishing the MSQ up to the date recorded. These numbers don't account for players who are active, but haven't finished either 3.3 as of July 2016 or 6.0 as of January 2022.

Here's a better Steam record


The game's certainly not hurting for players and has a general upward trend in overall player numbers even if there are peaks and drops with new expansion or major content patch releases.

[hagare]

So many trolls. Last I checked the game was healthy enough that I'm still getting at least a tiny queue whenever I log in(although no where nearly as big as back when EW released).

it's healthy enough to attract forum trolls

[Hanayumi]

I mean post and pre expansion drop has some the lowest active players. Post because there isnt really any content that hold folks ingame till later patches and Pre cause of the 5-6 month wait between the last major patch and next expansion drop. We got still got Island Sanctuary, Criterion Dungeons, new Deep Dungeon, and next Relic grind to drop still, not to mention the usual updates to raid...

[Raoabolic]

It doesn't matter if the sales dip as long as the whales are in it for the long run. I doubt this game is going anywhere, lol.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Why yes, I can log in and play the game without a stupid long queue.
Certanly, the numbers have dipped after a few months and will fluctuate between patches, and when the next expansion comes there will be a HUGE flux of players for 2 months before the dip and flux again...the same as it always has for the past 6 years.

Game is doing fine.
Stop with the Doomsaying

[Liam_Harper]

There is actually a dose of truth to this thread, despite the doomsaying and fact the game certainly isn't about to die.

Steam isn't accurate, but 70% is a lot and at least somewhat of a rough indicator of current trends. After all, it's unlikely that 70% of steam users randomly dropped the game while users on other platforms spiked. For those mentioning they still have small log-in queues, that's simply a ddos anti-measure where players are logged into the game in batches, rather than an indicator of the population. On the other hand the massive launch queues, which many predicted would return in 6.1 and never did, are probably gone for good.

I'm not sure why anyone who wants to see this game succeed is treating this like a personal attack. FF14 was handed a goldmine of an opportunity with the collapse of WoW and large rush of new players and failed to grasp it. That's a nasty blow, particularly if it means all the emergency investment SE put into obtaining new servers is going to go to waste. The game is "fine" but the same tired, safe formula we've had for a decade can't cut it forever, but they fully intend to roll it out for another decade.

The same thing is happening as in WoW. Players will parrot "those statistics aren't accurate" as numbers slowly decline, then when a few years down the line the evidence can't be ignored they'll change their tune to "the game is old, MMO's aren't popular, game is fine" as it trundles along a shadow of its former self.

WoW isn't dead either and still somewhat profitable, but it's a living meme at this point. FF14 won't die, but I'd rather not see it reduced to a joke one day.

[MintnHoney]

*cough* maybe even steam players switched to the forbidden launcher after launch.

Good news! Due to the previous steam/XIV "security updates," not even the forbidden launcher can bypass the requirement to connect through steam.

FF14 won't die, but I'd rather not see it reduced to a joke one day.

We're so dangerously close to that, I thought we were already there.

[icemage]

Those are wrong numbers, they are from Steam. Most players play with the official launcher. The game is as active as ever and this doomsaying has got to stop.