FF14 player count reached the lowest point in 4 years. We lost 75% of the playerbase.

[Red-thunder]

hop on lost ark

Lost Ark gameplay BTFO's this game but the P2W shit is just insane and having to do dailies and weeklies on six chars just to be able to hit min ilvl for w1 raids just means you have to treat it like a second job.

At least it's actually fun while it lasted. Whereas FF14 is not even fun even if you unsub and come back after four months every patch.

[DPZ2]

And once again, you have yet to provide any logical reason why Steam players are different enough as a cohort to render them statistically irrelevant.

All one can gather from the Steam Charts is that fewer people are actively playing at the same time. How do you equate that with "losing 75% of the playerbase"?

And what is meant by the term "losing"? Because last time I checked, Steam does not report subscription numbers for online games. Those numbers are more important to Square Enix's bottom line. I don't count 17.3 billion yen in profits as "losing".

[DPZ2]

Using operating income is one of the worst measures to discuss population

You're actually asserting that profits for a subscription-based game are one of the worst measures to determine whether the base of paying subscribers cratered?

[Supersnow845]

You're actually asserting that profits for a subscription-based game are one of the worst measures to determine whether the base of paying subscribers cratered?

Yes specifically because as a comparative example

OSRS and RS3 make the same profit per year

OSRS has TEN times RS3’s playerbase

You’ve basically pointed out that EW sold DT and that profit went up in the year DT released over the flat EW drought the year before and claimed that’s evidence the population didn’t collapse after DT released

[BigCheez]

All one can gather from the Steam Charts is that fewer people are actively playing at the same time. How do you equate that with "losing 75% of the playerbase"?

And what is meant by the term "losing"? Because last time I checked, Steam does not report subscription numbers for online games. Those numbers are more important to Square Enix's bottom line. I don't count 17.3 billion yen in profits as "losing".

Occam's razor.

Steam's average player numbers dropping significantly without the total number of players being affected would require a very strange set of circumstances in which everyone had continued to play the game, but less regularly, and were also somehow managing to coordinate when they play the game to avoid being online at the same time. Logically, you would expect there to be times like the evenings and weekends where people's play time would naturally overlap, resulting in more concurrent players.

When you combine this with the data from the Lucky Bancho report, reduced number of logs on FFLogs, reduced engagement in online communities, YouTube and Twitch, reduced PF activity in game, longer queue times and anecdotal evidence that literally everyone I know has stopped playing the game (there are 76 players in my FC, 50% have been offline for more than 2 months. 60% have been offline for more than 2 weeks. 90% have been offline for more than a week), it's pretty obvious that a majority of the playerbase is not actively playing at the minute.

Trying to suggest otherwise would be a fairly impressive level of cope.

[DPZ2]

...

Where, exactly, did you obtain financials for Old School Runescape and Runescape 3? The last good set of financials from Jagex was 2022. The February 2024 purchase by CVC Capital Partners means that anything Jagex does specifically no longer has reportable numbers. Jagex's only Legal reports at this time are the Modern Slavery Act Transparency Statement (2023) and Gender Pay Gap Reports (2022-2023). A quick peek at CVC Capital Partners acknowedges Jagex as part of their acquisitions in 2024, but nothing more.

I can easily [Reddit post] find numbers for 2021 (120 million pounds in net sales), and an estimate of a total of 1.1 million players, but not the 10 to 1 playerbase numbers you pulled out of ... where?

To be fair, you tried to obfuscate the actual question asked by performing a meaningless comparison to another set of MMORPGs for which you weren't asked. And, of course, OSRS and RS3 make the same profit because that profit is a single number for the company, rather than two separate numbers. No "Squirrel!" for you.

[Supersnow845]

Where, exactly, did you obtain financials for Old School Runescape and Runescape 3? The last good set of financials from Jagex was 2022. The February 2024 purchase by CVC Capital Partners means that anything Jagex does specifically no longer has reportable numbers. Jagex's only Legal reports at this time are the Modern Slavery Act Transparency Statement (2023) and Gender Pay Gap Reports (2022-2023). A quick peek at CVC Capital Partners acknowedges Jagex as part of their acquisitions in 2024, but nothing more.

I can easily [Reddit post] find numbers for 2021 (120 million pounds in net sales), and an estimate of a total of 1.1 million players, but not the 10 to 1 playerbase numbers you pulled out of ... where?

To be fair, you tried to obfuscate the actual question asked by performing a meaningless comparison to another set of MMORPGs for which you weren't asked. And, of course, OSRS and RS3 make the same profit because that profit is a single number for the company, rather than two separate numbers. No "Squirrel!" for you.

https://find-and-update.company-info...history?page=1

Here’s the separated financial statement of the games if you were interested, current playerbase of the game is public knowledge as the game doesn’t hide its server status

Regardless I simply used that as an example of operating revenue not telling the story of the playerbase

You yourself have yet explain why high sales from DT’s initial release is somehow evidence that the game didn’t crater AFTER DT released

[DPZ2]

Occam's razor.

Through Occam's Razor, increased sales over 3 quarters from a previous year should indicate the company is making more money this year than last. Since money earned through subscriptions is a good chunk of those profits, a significant downturn in the playerbase should result in a decided drop in those profits.

Your 'average players' still says nothing about the actual number of subscribers.

There are problems with the Lucky Bancho report. The biggest is that it drops players leveling from 1 through 70 because it cannot discern between free to play and paying subscribers. The second biggest is that it does not report on subscriptions, because those numbers are not present. The third biggest is that it inflates the number of active players based on the number of characters in the game, not the number of accounts paying a subscription. Go ask the alt-aholic contingent whether they have more than 1 character on their account.

The only report I've read recently indicates a drop from 1.4 million characters to about 1.03 million characters in the latest report, decidedly not anywhere near the click-bait of 75%.

If the argument is that Steam Chart numbers drop off between patches, or that that 95k concurrent player mark will never be reached again (that occurred one month before Endwalker released, mind you), or that the release of other games is as likely to attract a Steam player as this one, you've got my acknowledgement.

The use of terms like 'crater' and 'catastrophic' do not yet apply.

[Supersnow845]

You aren’t looking at their subscription income exclusively though

You are looking at a year when an expansion came out that everyone everyone agrees sold well and then trying to use the increased sales from an expansion launch year over a non expansion launch year to argue that indicates that sub numbers are higher

[DPZ2]

...

Your link provides no access to financial information beyond a 55-page filing from 2022, which is why I discarded it during my search before asking you to provide your source. Your second line does not contain a link, if you wanted to provide one.

If 75% of the playerbase 'cratered' after the release of DT, I would expect there would be a drop in Q3 sales year over year.

Or do you have a different definition of the word 'cratered' that doesn't include loss of subscription income?