This crappy expac is choking the life out of the game and still we carry on without even a comment on its reception by FE and Worlds Edge.
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as much as I despise 3K, I don’t think the data is confirming that. (remember that september data is incomplete, there hasn’t been a weekend in september yet, also big releases like silksong are happening)
apart from that, player count only matters to multiplayer. a more meaningful metric would be to see how many ranked games are on-going.
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that’s largely the summer dip. steam has fewer players in summer when people touch grass. it’s a phenomenon across most games
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The dip is lower than the last summers. The loss is not much, but clearly visible. The AoE2 community is pretty strong and one big bad DLC alone will not break them, but give them more DLCs like Three Kingdoms and you slowly grind them down. Such things did happened to other games before and the first signs for AoE2 are clearly here. The devs still have all the cards in the hand to change that, but if they think Three Kingdoms was good, AoE2 is doomed in the long run.
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Copium my guy, that’s a 3k dip in average players directly following 3 Kingdoms Release. That’s like 17% of the playerbase gone
This topic is basically a revival of that of yours:
With the same obvious fallacy that was already pointed out THEN
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For some that has already began with V&V.
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“it’s a fallacy because it’s information I don’t like”
It’s a 17% drop on average players and almost 30% for peak players.
We warned the devs we’d walk away from the game over 3k. They didn’t listen, half the community encouraged them not to and said we wouldn’t leave. Now you and the remaining community is stuck here holding the bag of a double digit drop and you don’t wanna admit it because it means mistakes were made and the games entered live service death spiral which comes with its own host of negatives
I made a new topic because the dropping number got bigger, and warranted discussion about the continued drop. Because this is it, this is the one window that allows us as a community to save the game. If the next DLC comes out without apologies for 3k and a solution, rest assured, I will leave this community to it’s fate at that point.
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I think the dip is lower, because 3K released in May 2025, while 2024 had V&V in March and BfG in November. A DLC always causes a bump in player numbers @SurfaceTen38 just picked the window so it would look worse.
I fucking despise 3k, and I don’t like the direction this game is going in. The last DLC I liked was Dawn of the Dukes. No copium from me.
just compare 2024:
with 2025:
(if someone could provide data for average player count instead of peak that would be great)
player counts are pretty stable, but consistently higher by a bit in 2025
or even DoI in my case
it’s a fallacy because you aren’t comparing like-for-like. You need to compare spring 2024 to spring 2025, summer to summer etc.
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“look at this comparison!” and it’s fuckin 1k over months and not nearly 5k all at once directly following an expansion pack.
Seems completely different to me? And what DLC has seen a drop bigger than the bump it caused other than this?
I see that every month in 2025 has more players than the ones in 2024 (except for March where DLC was released)
a big drop-off from may-June is normal, as that’s when school holidays start in lots of places
every year since aoe2 came out, June had the biggest drop-off, with May being second place. the only exception is 2024 (where may had the biggest drop off)
2025 was different, because May, which should have been a drop-off month, got a boost through the (shitty) DLC. so the people who would have dropped the game in May, dropped it in June instead.
The issue isn’t that they are releasing awful DLC, the issue is that there are enough people who are buying it.
Ok, see you in a few months when the cold months see continued drops
If you re-re-“not”-necro the same topic then again you will probably receive a ban.
And very unnecessarily cause the stats just don’t support your “interpretation”. If anything you actually only remind other members of the communit that don’t like 3K how successfull it actually was. Which is also unnecessary.
You are not a moderator. Spare me your veiled threats for talking about something you don’t like.
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This is right, there is no visible drop off if you look closely. I have to say, before Three Kingdoms was released, they dropped one of the most liked patches ever. The AoE2 community is just pretty solid, so it takes more to grind them down.
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its only 5k
devs: hold my beer
They wish it was only…3k.
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badum..tss <3 (20 characters)
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Stop being so salty, just wait a few months and if it was a long term drop, then we will see. No point in debating if we need to wait for more long term stats in order to even accurately say anything. Just be patient, hold off on this topic a few more months/a year to see if player drop is lasting. Then, if the stats support your point, then you can trash talk more accurately and sophisticatedly what 3k has done to player size in aoe2 based on the stats, Until then, we will see.
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