Player numbers?

[Jojoya]

Steam is indeed a really good trend indicator if you just take the percentage and not the raw numbers.

Except that didn't work most of Endwalker, where players kept going "Look at the Steam numbers, the game is dying!" just for statements from SE to come out showing that FFXIV was the one area of solid growth for them.

People should stop worrying about how many others are playing a game, and just worry about whether or not they like it themselves. There are plenty of games with much larger player bases than FFXIV and I don't touch them because they're not games I like.