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

[DPZ2]

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

So, how about we revisit this during, say, the September financial report period for FY2026 (1 April-30 September 2025). That's two quarters, complete with numbers over the 7.2 and 7.3 patch releases that will not be due to increased sales in a non-expansion-launch year?

[Supersnow845]

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?

The information is in there it shows both halves of the game made about 60 million pounds each in the years 2020 and 2021 though revenue is trending towards OSRS. Like I said you can look up their in game population right now, RuneScape doesn’t hide population numbers, log on and the numbers are right there, for example right now OSRS is at 120k and RS3 is at 15k

DT came out right at the end of Q2, the playerbase didn’t fall that fast and you are comparing it to a year that don’t the entire time in a drought. Q4’s numbers are unfavourable compared to the equivalent quarter after EW (though we don’t have Q1 for this year). I never said it dropped specifically by 75% but I do agree with the wider point that the population is not trending in a healthy direction

[BigCheez]

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.

I don't care how much money SE are making. I care about the quality of the game and service that I'm receiving for my money. I'm also not here to make bold claims about 75% of the playerbase having jumped ship. You can take that up with the OP.

While you're right in that the Lucky Bancho report is not a complete dataset because it doesn't include non-max level players, we don't need a complete dataset. We need a large enough sample size to accurately gauge player behaviour. A sample size of 1.4 million characters is definitely a large enough sample size to do that. We could reasonably assume that retention has been better for players who are still playing through the MSQ because they haven't arrived at Dawntrail and aren't dealing with the current issues, but the discourse here is primarily about the current state of endgame and how that has affected the active (and now inactive) playerbase.

What we can see is that the drop from 1.4m active characters to 1 million (and probably lower now because the report was a month or so ago) is a much larger percentage change than we're used to seeing at this point in an expansion, and that definitely tells us that something is wrong and should probably change in future expansions.

I think the word "catastrophic" is definitely a fitting descriptor for the reception to Dawntrail's launch period. It's been littered with issues so far. Here's hoping that things improve.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Dawntrail was just a terrible expansion when it came to writing and characters, and as a Glare Mage, I feel gameplay has been rather stagnant since Shadowbringers at latest with issues that have nothing done about them...

[SamanthaVideogames]

I like FFXIV, it's fun

[Clockworks]

I like FFXIV, it's fun

"I like FFXIV it's fun"

[Hallarem]

There is no war in ba sing se

[SamanthaVideogames]

"I like FFXIV it's fun"

Me Smiling, Because I Like The Game

[SamanthaVideogames]

There is no war in ba sing se

Hey man, What's Up.

[xbahax92]

All the talk about numbers, while the game has severe life-cycle issues. The only content right now is the mogry station.
Doesn't really matter if player population drops by 50%, 60% or 70%. DT released on 2. July 2024 and 7 months have passed. We've repeated the same 'fresh, new' content and the slog will continue to late March.

And expect the 'new' 7.2 content to be delivered in a staggered schedule once again.