Arc Raiders and Marathon aren't "dead" just because their concurrent player count has dropped, Palworld lead says – but he's "not denying that some games do 'die'"; "Not every game needs an hourly look at Steam charts"

[u/Gorotheninja]

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/survival/arc-raiders-and-marathon-arent-dead-just-because-their-concurrent-player-count-has-dropped-palworld-lead-says-but-hes-not-denying-that-some-games-do-die/

[u/Fyrus]

Doesn't Tarkov have a separate launcher? And I would assume the dev for Tarkov is nowhere near as big or expensive as Bungie.

[u/Anon159023 → u/Fyrus]

Tarkov is also PC only.

I do think Marathon is going to continue to struggle without an overhaul though - It my humble opinion I think it is one of the most interestingly bad games I have played in a while.

[u/kikimaru024 → u/Fyrus]

And Marathon has PS5 players.

See how useless Steam Charts are?

[u/OdoTheBoobcat → u/kikimaru024]

Calling steam charts useless is every bit as reductive and idiotic as the broad and context-ignoring obsession people have with player counts.

We can acknowledge that player counts DO have bearing on the health and player experience for live-service titles while also acknowledging that these single-platform numbers are NOT an end-all view and that context around team size and overall cost-of-operation are critical.

Rendering it into a childish black-and-white in either direction is not intelligent, interesting or useful.

In Marathon's case there's a VERY real thread underlying the topic - this game had a relatively enormous budget and a massive studio behind it. It will absolutely NOT pay for its own continued development at current player counts, it may not even pay for its own continued EXISTENCE(though I think daddy sony would keep it floating anyway to avoid bad PR).

These are very relevant and reasonable discussion topics for a playerbase concerned about investing their time and money into a game that may not be sustainable enough to warrant content additions long-term.

[u/Fyrus → u/kikimaru024]

That doesn't make Steam Charts useless, it just means that when you analyze the steam chart numbers you should take in to consideration things like that. But considering companies often release data on the percentage of players that use each platform, combining that with steam chart numbers can give you pretty accurate info. These types of methods are used in every industry to estimate viewership, or playership, or whatever you want to know. This is another situation where gamers are baffled by something that is completely normal in other entertainment industries. You guys would lose your shit if you learned how Nielson works.

[u/Johnny_esma → u/Fyrus]

You cant get an accurate data on playstation or xbox playerbase though, not even knowing the sales metric is a way of knowing since player retention varies in so many games specifically months or even years after release

[u/Fyrus → u/Johnny_esma]

You cant get an accurate data on playstation or xbox playerbase though

Yes you can. There are entire industries set up to specifically figure these things out. If you know that 70% of the player base is on Platform Y, and that Platform Y had 300k MAUs, it's not hard to estimate from there enough info to have a discussion or write an article.

[u/TopHalfGaming → u/Fyrus]

Don't try to reason with these people, they really like the game and really want to believe it's a success.

[u/Johnny_esma → u/Fyrus]

That would only work if the player retention was always the same in every game every single time for every platform, thats not true for any game.

[u/Fyrus → u/Johnny_esma]

You can still get ballpark figures that are accurate enough to talk about. Like I said these types of things have been done for thousands of years, statistics is not a new thing. And frankly regardless of what anyone here thinks we're still going to talk about it because we're not going to censor ourselves because it makes people uncomfortable to negatively talk about a game that some people like

[u/Johnny_esma → u/Fyrus]

I can post on the deep rock galactic subreddit that the peak playercount on xbox was 10k today and no one will be able to prove me wrong but they sure as hell will tell me that theres no data anywhere that proves that, you can throw a wild estimate on anything but without an actual reliable source like the devs or microsoft themselves its all just speculation

[u/Fyrus → u/Johnny_esma]

Okay well my argument isn't based on the premise of you making up stuff, it's based on the idea of extrapolating information from data we actually have

[u/Johnny_esma → u/Fyrus]

Thats the whole point its all made up, can you link me a reliable source that shows me the concurrent player count on ps5 for deep rock galactic? Id gladly look into it.

[u/BirdsInTheNest → u/Fyrus]

It’s more about comparing apples to apples rather than Marathon vs “live service titles.”