So SE has officially stated their MMO profits have tanked.

[RedLolly]

https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/26q1slides.pdf

I mean, we ALL know this. We're the ones sticking it out out of hope, spite, or RP, but yeah. There it is.

The devs keep stating they WANT to change, but we're only seeing the very earliest start of it possibly happening.

Oof.

[DreadCrow]

I think it's more concerning that literally everything is less profitable than it was before than just the MMO division.

[BlisteringFrost]

I think it's more concerning that literally everything is less profitable than it was before than just the MMO division.

People being locked inside at home during Covid meant people needed some way to waste time. Game industry saw a massive inflation during this but upper management in the industries various companies don't seem to understand why that boon is suddenly gone like water evaporating into nothing in a desert. It's not concerning at all. It's just a coming to terms phase while the industry is in a state of flux.

You can think of it like a miniature crash. FFXIV never did have a massive population. Never. Not until Shadowbringers and Endwalker. What was happening then? Covid. Lockdowns worldwide. What ISN'T happening now? Lockdowns, worldwide. People going back to work and / or school and just generally not playing video games as much.

[Rinoa_353]

People being locked inside at home during Covid meant people needed some way to waste time. Game industry saw a massive inflation during this but upper management in the industries various companies don't seem to understand why that boon is suddenly gone like water evaporating into nothing in a desert. It's not concerning at all. It's just a coming to terms phase while the industry is in a state of flux.

You can think of it like a miniature crash. FFXIV never did have a massive population. Never. Not until Shadowbringers and Endwalker. What was happening then? Covid. Lockdowns worldwide. What ISN'T happening now? Lockdowns, worldwide. People going back to work and / or school and just generally not playing video games as much.

You can argue that the quality of the MSQ of DT has tanked as well prior to 7.2, so that has led many players to stop playing too.

[BlisteringFrost]

You can argue that the quality of the MSQ of DT has tanked as well prior to 7.2, so that has led many players to stop playing too.

The quality is mostly the same as it was in EW and SHB. The reality is what happened was mass disillusionment.

[Arrius]

People being locked inside at home during Covid meant people needed some way to waste time. Game industry saw a massive inflation during this but upper management in the industries various companies don't seem to understand why that boon is suddenly gone like water evaporating into nothing in a desert. It's not concerning at all. It's just a coming to terms phase while the industry is in a state of flux.

You can think of it like a miniature crash. FFXIV never did have a massive population. Never. Not until Shadowbringers and Endwalker. What was happening then? Covid. Lockdowns worldwide. What ISN'T happening now? Lockdowns, worldwide. People going back to work and / or school and just generally not playing video games as much.

Sadly, it does come currently with a stupidly massive wave of layoffs in the industry, while the top that got them into that trouble in the first place give themselves a pat and still remain in position, 'trimming the fat' so they say.

[Veritas-Ancora]

CBU3 has a horrible road ahead of them. They've already gained as many new players as they could these past 10 years, the real problem now is to bring all those players back.

I don't envy their jobs right now. I think bringing back Ascian-level storytelling is the only way they're going to convince players to resubscribe.

[Shinku_Tachi]

With Dawntrail being the most poorly reviewed FFXIV release since 1.0, the number of active players falling precipitously, and Kiryu being directly questioned by shareholders over Dawntrail being a flop in terms of player retention.

We all should have expected that news to come.

Now is the time for a fire to be lit under Yoshida-san's and CBU3's ***. Because if 8.0 doesn't perform, lol... somebody better call Tanaka and ask him what happens when Square Enix starts asking, "what have you done for me lately."

[ShadowyZero]

this is what happens when they ignore the years opon years of player feedback an keep doubling down on a stale formula an poorly pieced together coding that burns the engine apart everytime its past time they did away with all the limitations an rewrite the entire structure to give the populace what they've been demanding YEARS AGO not later, not next expansion but NOW here in the present before this game really does crash an burn again like days of eld the dark times of version 1.0

[Jeeqbit]

People being locked inside at home during Covid meant people needed some way to waste time.

That's true, but I want to give you some context here to explain why this decline isn't related to post-Covid.

1. Every expansion has grown by a persistent population of around 200,000 or more, especially since Stormblood. Stormblood likely benefitted from a huge amount of marketing, since the game was still not as mainstream as it could be then.
2. Shadowbringers catapulted it into the mainstream between its epic trailer, a WoW exodus that began in their "BfA" expansion and continued into further expansions due to the disturbing press. To this day, a lot of current players started in Shadowbringers. The gains, however, were relatively consistent with Stormblood's.
3. Covid did not have much impact throughout 2020. There were just the normal patch spikes and that's it.
4. In February/March 2021, the game went viral due to the Blizzard scandal and everyone fleeing to FFXIV, which culminated in Asmongold finally deciding to play. So intense was this gain, that we have yet to surpass it. It was easily the game's peak population. And it had nothing to do with Covid whatsoever.
5. Endwalker maintained gains, often double what we normally get from an expansion release. Up from the 900k in Shadowbringers, we didn't just settle on 1.1 million, we often reached levels of around 1.4 million, due in part that it was the "end of the arc" and over 50% of former players returned at some point or another to see the end of the story (source: % of past players with Endwalker minion on collection sites). But it was obviously in part due to it going viral and Asmongold. By the end of Endwalker, we were long past Covid and could no longer attribute 1.1+ million to Covid.
6. Dawntrail release very nearly reached the peak it did when Asmongold played. It seemed as if the standard expansion gains in Endwalker (of at least 1.1 million) were going to permanently increase to 1.3 million or so, because each expansion usually grows the game that much.
7. That didn't happen. The game has shot down to Shadowbringers levels of around 900k.

And we don't need to say why, do we? Despite all the complaints and pessimism, people returned for Dawntrail, then immediately dropped the population below Endwalker's extremely stable population levels - because people obviously were not happy with the Dawntrail story. And they have struggled with difficulty that is not catered to a wide range of difficulty levels, that SE are trying to solve starting with Pilgrim's Traverse.

You can think of it like a miniature crash.

See, it could be miniature. There is precedent for people returning to an MMORPG. ARR proved this, and so has WoW recently. But it's ultimately contingent on the offer being enticing enough.

FFXIV never did have a massive population. Never. Not until Shadowbringers and Endwalker. What was happening then? Covid.

I agree but for different reasons. The baseline population is really those who started the game in its earliest days. They not only have a greater sunk cost, they also have a greater understanding of the game and of how much infectious passion the developers showed from its earliest days. Clearly, a lot of newer players do not understand that since they weren't around for it, so never developed the same sort of understanding of the developers and thus find it easier to leave. Additionally, the people who joined due to streamers like Asmongold obviously just follow said streamers to the next game they play. The result being a reduced population after the hype wears off, and this is all regardless of Covid.

Even amongst long-time players, while the game was growing, a decline was happening simoultaneously amongst the long-time players, and it began a very long time ago:

• Shadowbringers and to a lesser extent Stormblood alienated some players and made them quit, as they saw the trajectory of jobs very early on and swiftly quit. I saw this plenty among people I'd met in the game at that time.
• Endwalker and to a lesser extent Shadowbringers people began to observe frustrations with battles, which SE are now attempting to solve in Dawntrail. There were people who quit over this, but it wasn't really reflected in the statistics because more people were joining the game than quitting.
• But a lot of players stuck around for one simple reason and that's the story. So once that disappointed them, they were done. That was Dawntrail.