From 580k to 390k drop after two weeks.

My character is DeadEye, level 87.
I stopped playing,because：
1.I hate Trial of the Sekhemas。
2.The end game content is extremely restrictive，For example, I like to challenge boss and don't like Delirium, but for the loot, I have to clear the Delirium on the path.

Retention always drops dramatically post release, thats true of every game that has ever been released and why day one sale are always the metric used, not active players after a month. If a game stabilizes 10% of its day 1 players thats considered a success. Compare it to other steam top sellers that have released over the same time intervals to find actually useful data. Looking at one game alone tells you literally nothing because you can interpret the data in whatever way fits your narrative because you’re not comparing it to the rest of the industry.

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Maes#8802 wrote:

Retention always drops dramatically post release, thats true of every game that has ever been released and why day one sale are always the metric used, not active players after a month. If a game stabilizes 10% of its day 1 players thats considered a success. Compare it to other steam top sellers that have released over the same time intervals to find actually useful data. Looking at one game alone tells you literally nothing because you can interpret the data in whatever way fits your narrative because you’re not comparing it to the rest of the industry.

again that is only true for single player $60+games NOT for live service ones that require steady playerbase to keep engagement up to survive ...

PoE2 cannot afford to taper off this soon in the most lucrative season of the year this fast - if it was already out and with regular seasonal schedule like PoE1 THEN it would be fine as is

when you compare the numbers to actually comparable game like lets say Helldivers2 - a succesfull overhyped live service game - you can see they had 2 whole weeks of growth then plateaued for a MONTH and only THEN they started SLOWLY losing players by a trickle and it took another month to have noticeable loss in concurrents

PoE2 hit max in just three days and in two weeks since then slumped to 3/4s despite this being the greatest time for games which should mean a massive growth ...


also a similarity to the Helldivers 2 is that the game was literally destroyed by "devs following theyr vision" and constant barrage of nerfs to the point that in less than half a year it turned from extremely successful "wow look at the numbers" into a less than 10 k concurrent playerbase ...


so ill say it again, game that is currently 2nd in Steams top sellers and despite that having massive downturn in concurrents is signifying only one thing - a lot of earlier players are already leaving and not even massive influx of fresh buyers is able to stem that bleeding ... guess what that will look like when the new buyers baited by influencers stop coming in ...

Probably the main reason for the drop off is that quest instances are too big. People like myself don't have 2-3 hours to spare to do a quest which if you don't finish you lose all progress, especially in a linear game like this where you have to complete a quest to move on. If they don't change things, this will become a niche game for the unemployed.

Also difficulty is an issue for a lot of people. Saying "Git gud" won't cut it. The game needs difficulty settings or it will die. Live service games need to keep as many people engaged as possible for as long as possible.

Based on the steamchart after a month now over 50% have quit the PoE2 early access.

Discussion about that is kind of pointless. Whoever closely listened to devs would know they expect players come and go on regular bases. They expect other games are played. They didn't expect so many players will play beta (early access). Steam is not reliable source as most of experience players will use stand-alone client. And those players are target for EA. In 3 months time will be more classes added and game will have peak again. And biggest peak in about a year when free version of full release will come. Stop doom posts. It is unfair and annoying.

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Kopogero#0635 wrote:

Based on the steamchart after a month now over 50% have quit the PoE2 early access.

What exactly are you trying to prove? What's the point of necro'ing a two week old thread?

Many players that have quit are likely people who do not play arpgs seasonally (This happened in Diablo 4 as well). They finished all the content and moved on to the next game. There will be people who didn't like the game. There will be people with real life stuff going on. There will be any number of reasons people stopped playing the game.

This is an incomplete game with a unbalanced experience in many areas. Many players are likely to swoop back in once there is new content and/or a league.

But....

I can tell you that 99% of games/devs would love to have 250,000 people playing their game a month after "release." This is also steam only numbers and does not account for stand alone client and consoles so your whole thread is about incomplete data, partial the story. These are in no way concerning.

There is likely to not be any server wipes but they had mentioned doing leagues in early access so that would be the wipe/economy reset.

who already stopped playing, this type of game is not for them, thats all. now pls find a game for yourself and stop making stupid topics. thanks, bye.

These numbers (info/data) is quite useful to both the community and GGG. This industry and where it's been for a while it's why now there's these arguments that it's become the "norm" a newly released, especially a live service (online) game that's been developed and hyped for years to experience a 50%+ decline after a month, early access or not.

All games eventually see the sunset, but the "live service" online multiplayer games overall do better because a lot more money and time (resources) are spent, which means what kind of retention the game has, which can be either a drop off, stagnation or growth (outside of expanding to different markets/regions and consoles).

The arguments I read about GGG not expecting so many to play the beta is the typical white knighting. The reality is steamcharts is as reliable and credible source for retention.

It was around 15 years ago when Blizzard was advertising or boasting 12 million active subs. It will be interesting how GGG as a company will navigate to appease its shareholders with what else is coming in 2025 and beyond.

The numbers are expected based on all seasons in ARPGs. Especially considering there's a lot less content than POE1 AND POE2 is much slower than POE1.

It's a F2P game charging for early access. The numbers will be much bigger on actual F2P launch as well.