Helldiver’s 2 Has Lost 90% Of Its Players (Steam)

[John Elden Ring]

The simultaneous release of Helldivers 2 on PlayStation and PC helped make it a huge hit, especially on PC where it hit 458,709 concurrent players two weeks after launch. But that was indeed the peak, and it has declined 90% in four months, down to 44,093 peak concurrent players. As such, it is routinely outside the top 10 list, and is #58 in top sellers on the service. The most-viewed Twitch stream of the game at this moment has 56 viewers.

This is important because this is a live game. This is the type of game that Sony wanted to make an impact and become an ongoing success, not just an initial one. Sony can sell plenty of copies of single player games and it’s fine if the playercount significantly drops off rather quickly once players are finished. But there is no “finishing” Helldivers, which is constantly adding new gear, cosmetics, Major Orders and new fronts of the war. Players most recently have been complaining that higher levels were too punishing to be fun, but after a large-scale buff patch, it barely moved the needle.


Looking at the numbers, there has been no significant surge other than a brief spike when a mass Automaton invasion happened, but interest fell sharply after a week, and since then the game has continued to shed players quickly.

via Forbes

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Paul Tassi is such a piece of shit journalist. He knows how live service games work, but ignores that to drum up doom & gloom.

I'd love to tear his putrid credibility to shreds in an actual gaming debate, but he doesn't have the courage to step outside of his echo chamber.

 

[Yurinka]

Keeping around 10% of the active userbase peak 5 months after launch it's a good achievement for a paid game, it's a great user retention that a small percent (specially non-F2P) games achieve. Only a tiny portion of top tier performers are way above it.

Some games as reference comparing their CCU 5 months after launch vs their CCU launch peak:

• FIFA 23 around 60%
• Destiny 2 around 40%
• Street Fighter 6 around 27%
• CoD around 20%
• Tekken 8 14%
• GTAV 13 %
• Helldivers II 10%
• The Finals 7%
• Elden Ring 5%
• Suicide Squad 4%
• Mortal Kombat 1 3%
• Starfield 3%
• Halo Infinite 2%
• Cyberpunk 2077 2%
• Palworld 1%

Being a GaaS that's great news because retention is the most important metric, specially D180 (average percent of players who keep playing 180 days after they first played the game, not related to/different metric than CCU).

There are also other important things to see how successful the game is, like the volume ot that active userbase ignoring the percent (it isn't the same if that 10% is 50K CCU or 2K) or like the LTV (average revenue made by a user since launch considering the game purchase + addons). Being a $40 paid GaaS game means its LTV is higher than that, and than most F2P games.

 

[Jim Ryan]

Whew, thank god they didn't require PSN sign in... Huh?

They really helped the game stay popular by caving to he entitled.

 

[Muddasar]

It’s a live service game not a F2P game.

Player numbers will always be lower in a paid game and neither is it dependent on player numbers.

It matters for F2P games which are dependent on microtransactions to make money.

Also this is only Steam numbers.

The game has sold 12 million copies at 40 dollars and already made a huge profit.

Something no one expected in lifetime sales let alone a few months.

Trust this numpty to make this article after it has sold 12 million copies and is the fastest selling game in PS history.

The same numpty raves about Destiny which also fluctuates in CCU.

Somehow it doesn’t matter cause it’s a live service game. If it was offline only at 50 dollars it would be fine.

Weird.

 

[Infinity]

This game wasn't going to be hot for ever.

 

[Airbus]

Losing 90% player base in less than a year is not good

This is why sony shouldnt rely on live service game

 

[ToTTenTranz]

It's fine. People will come back when there's new content, and leave a couple weeks after that content drops.

At least things are fun now, and this was never a game with the level of investment that predicts massive engagement forever. This was never meant to be a Destiny successor.

At best, this was going to be like Rocket League. And indeed it is.


That's not to say it will never be like Destiny, but that would require massive investment and time to build upon it.

 

[Muddasar]

Losing 90% player base in less than a year is not good

This is why sony shouldnt rely on live service game

Why does playerbase matter for Helldivers 2?

People are paying for the game upfront and all microtransactions can be bought with in game credits simply because of that.

It is not a F2P game where it matters.

Live service does not equate to F2P game.

 

[Draven]

All multiplayer games have this issue. When they release new content people back.

The problem will be if new content is released and people don't come back. Then we will have a problem.

 

[mibu no ookami]

Why does playerbase matter for Helldivers 2?

People are paying for the game upfront and all microtransactions can be bought with in game credits simply because of that.

It is not a F2P game where it matters.

Live service does not equate to F2P game.

Honestly, just put people on ignore at this point.

People don't understand different business models or don't want to.

Helldivers 2 at the end of the day is probably going to be the best selling game of the year (mainly because CoD comes out in November) and one of Sony's best selling games of all time, if not the highest selling (and grossing). When considering the Supercitizen bundle and warbonds, it's probably generated as much money as other 60-70 dollar games from Sony and we know it was at 12 million units sold in May, so 3 months after release.

The game will get some update or expansion, but it'll probably end up F2P for PS+ users and then eventually F2P for everyone (again still making money from warbonds) and that's after it gets discounted to 20-30 dollars, which it still hasn't yet, probably because it's generally still pretty high ranked in sales on both Steam and the PS store.

When Sony selected 40 dollars for this game rather than F2P or 70, that's a pretty clear indication of the model they're choosing for the game. The same is true of Concord in terms of the business model.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

50k people are still playing it daily, thats probably more players than sony and arrowhead even though they’d get at peak on release

 

[Yurinka]

Losing 90% player base in less than a year is not good

Losing 90% daily CCU peak (which is not its player base) after 5 months is better than most games including live service ones, see some random examples here.

50k people are still playing it daily, thats probably more players than sony and arrowhead even though they’d get at peak on release

50K people playing it daily would be 50K DAU (daily active users, people who played at any point of the day).

50K CCU is a different metric, it means concurrent users (people playing at the same time).

Meaning, if the game has 50K CCU on the point of the day where they had the maximum amount of players playing at the same time during that day, maybe the game has 100K DAU or more because there are many players who also played that day but weren't connected at the moment of the CCU peak for that day.

We also have to count the players that aren't on Steam. Meaning, pretty likely the game has over 200K playing everyday counting all platforms. This is a lot of people and yes, they mentioned that the game is more successful than both Sony and Arrowhead expected.

 

[Vertigo]

40k peak ccu isn’t the worst place to be in for your bottom line of hardcore playerbase. It’s also not great but the game is a bit content exhausted at the moment no? I do have my concerns about the logevity of the game type’s long term appeal but that’s up to arrowhead to figure out.

Did Palworld relaunch today? It’s charting over 130k again . Also… did FF14 launch on steam for dawntrail or was it always available? These charts might see a shake up

 

[Kokoloko]

Well i just started playing last week. Way better than the original.
This isnt a free to play. This is probably the same people that think Gaas is totally different to MP games which Sony use to do

 

[Entropi]

Isn’t that how most online games work?

 

[quest4441]

Ah Paul Tassi with the hard hitting investigative journalism, this clown having a job shows the nadir of the so called "gaming journalism". I have no love for arrowhead and the clown show they run with their incompetence and their frankly retarded CM team but this article is still a "meet quota" article

 

[ethomaz]

That is what happens with all live service games.

Whatever new content hits the peak goes high again.

 

[Muddasar]

Well i just started playing last week. Way better than the original.
This isnt a free to play. This is probably the same people that think Gaas is totally different to MP games which Sony use to do

Exactly.

Weird that people are using F2P standards on a paid game.

A paid game where everything in game can be bought with super credits for free.

Tells you all you need to know that player retention is irrelevant to Helldivers.

It’s a bonus. The same applies to Gran Turismo and MLB the Show.

Naturally since it is a paid game it also won’t have the same player counts or retention as F2P games either.

Sony got your money upfront. They don’t care whether you continue to play the game or not.

The game has sold 12 million in a few months. Something nobody expected including Sony in its entire lifetime.

This numpty works for Forbes and is questioning whether it is a success. Go figure.

 

[Etifilio]

hope it was worth all the PS5s and Ps Plus subscriptions they could've sold by having this game as an exclusive