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

[MonsutaMan]

Well, FFXIV was a popular game, because popular people played it.

It is not happenstance its predecessor was the most profitable game in the series until that WoW wave occurred.

Steam is not the entire picture, but the perhaps the most successful gaming platform....So a great snapshot of what is happening with a particular game. Could the drop be worst? We don't know....companies do not release bad press.......

Steam charts cannot be taken as an entire picture.

As someone who played Marvel Heroes, Kritika reboot, Landmark, Defiance to name a few, it cannot be ignored neither.......

[MonsutaMan]

Also....The free login thing.

[VelKallor]

Steam is not the entire picture

Steam is less than 10% and is not any kind of accurate metric.

[Larirawiel]

Those losts in the player base are normal for every theme park game. So i would not worry about that.


Cheers

[Carin-Eri]

FFXIV is an anomaly in the MMO space that actually values your time. WoW and other MMO's had this FOMO feeling like no other. I know when I come back to the game I can catch up pretty fast, and it's better to let things take time in FFXIV. Blowing through the content isn't my goal. Taking my time and not feeling like I have to hurry.

FOMO was a big factor in my leaving a game I'd played for slightly over a decade behind. Not going to name said game, as have no interest in discussing it out of context.

I played said game on a daily basis from late 2011 until December 2021, when I realised I'd had enough - I had no tolerance left for the overwhelming mobile-gaming-cashgrab mentality that drives that game's business model these days. An overwhelming commitment to FOMO, gambleboxes (with preposterously low chances of winning anything worthwhile and the company refusing to disclose the odds), and 'micro' transactions that contradict the term (I don't consider £300 for a single-character unlock item to be a 'micro' transaction) at the cost of content. We're talking one or two new episodes, worth about 45 minutes of play time, every four or five months.

Personally, I find the FOMO fueled gaming sleazy. Its a model designed to coerce or funnel players into a specific activity which they don't necessarily like, but feel like they have to tolerate, in order to get a limited-time reward (the Devs can also then reference predictably-high engagement numbers as "proof" that players actually like that activity).

I refuse to be the sort of player who bemoans a game's business model and then gives them money anyway - that does nothing more than communicate the sort of nonsense you are willing to accept in the only language they understand/care about.

For me, FFXIV has been a breath of fresh air. None of that FOMO rubbish. No gambleboxes. No big-ticket bundles with triple-figure pricetags, and the content updates are consistent and engaging.

[SamSmoot]

I have my NIN maxed out to mostly 600 gear (not doing savage), so my interest in him has declined. Just for something to do, I leveled a Summoner to 90 and gearing it now via tomestones and nutsacks. Hairstyles would give me about 1 minute of gameplay to check them out and ignore.

[AlyaNimfa]

Someone get me an umbrella, the sky is falling!

[Ivtrix]

Steam is less than 10% and is not any kind of accurate metric.

source?

also it takes way less than 10% to identify patterns in a body of study

[DPZ2]

source?

also it takes way less than 10% to identify patterns in a body of study

"FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn is estimated to have 1,854,888 players per day this month." (Source: https://mmo-population.com/r/ffxiv)

The OP's graph from Steam, rounded up, is 26,000. That's about .014%, which is certainly way below 10%.

Stats indicate an average of 3,460,103 active players in Januay 2022 (right after 6.0 launch), and 3,682,079 active players in Jun 2022 (after 6.15 release with new Ultimate). It appears that the Yearly population chart has a dip down to about 600,000 active players in the mid-March to early-April time frame, before the 6.1 release.

Yeah, that means an 80% drop in the active player population for the last of a 4 month lull in new content, followed by 600% increase in active player population when the new patch came out.

And yes, the numbers are as dubious as any other when talking about populations for online games, although I trust them more than I do some count of the Steam gamer population statistics that say nothing about all of the console and PC users of FFXIV who do not play through Steam.

[ZephyrMenodora]

"FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn is estimated to have 1,854,888 players per day this month." (Source: https://mmo-population.com/r/ffxiv)

The OP's graph from Steam, rounded up, is 26,000. That's about .014%, which is certainly way below 10%.

Stats indicate an average of 3,460,103 active players in Januay 2022 (right after 6.0 launch), and 3,682,079 active players in Jun 2022 (after 6.15 release with new Ultimate). It appears that the Yearly population chart has a dip down to about 600,000 active players in the mid-March to early-April time frame, before the 6.1 release.

Yeah, that means an 80% drop in the active player population for the last of a 4 month lull in new content, followed by 600% increase in active player population when the new patch came out.

And yes, the numbers are as dubious as any other when talking about populations for online games, although I trust them more than I do some count of the Steam gamer population statistics that say nothing about all of the console and PC users of FFXIV who do not play through Steam.

The steam numbers are concurrent though, not total for a day. In content lulls I play 20 minutes a day to run a daily and log out, so since I'm assuming most people aren't logged in all day it's a bit hard to determine total daily users from steam.