After Dawntrails abject Failure of a Story, there need to be serious Consequences

[Kazemon15]

...unless there is any indication though that the preference for whether or not to play through Steam has changed independently of the popularity of the title at large, we must presume that Steam numbers do reflect the overall trend.

No, every FFXIV player I played with in game actively tells people to avoid steam at all costs. So it isn't a good way to see the number of playerbases at all. Unless you can only play FFXIV through steam, then yeah. But there are other ways to do it. So it doesn't really count.