AoE3 DE and AoM Retold shares the same game engine and developers team so it is a fair comparison to check how you allocated resources for those titles. And with what effect:
Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition
Age of Mythology: Retold
Release date
X 2020 (4,5 years ago)
IX 2024 (0,5 year ago)
Tournaments sponsored by WE
1
3 already done, 2 announced, probably more to come
Total money spent on tournaments
9 000$
57 000$
Xbox console version
No
Yes
Support
Rare balance patches, no bugfixes, no QoL features for over a year
Active support, QoL features, bugfixes, balance patches
Copies sold on Steam
1,41 - 4,44 mln
0,45 - 1,55 mln
Number of people playing right now on Steam (16.02.2025, 13:00, CET)
5396
2732
In only 6 months after AoM Retold release you were able to give this game support you never gave to AOE3 in 9 times longer period! Big tournament every month or two. Major prize pool for every one of them. Instant Xbox version on relase date…
And this is current playerbase on Steam for both games (last 3 years):
So, from a very beginning anyone can see that you treated AoM Retold way better than AoE3. And still despite your efforts what is the effect? AoM Retold currently has almost 2x less players on Steam that AoE3 DE. It should make you think. Maybe your strategy is wrong? Maybe instead of pumping AoM Retold so much, you should implement our DLC and sold it to diversify your income?
But instead you pumped AoM Retold even more by announcing Playstation 5 version of it and completely dumped AoE3, cancelling our DLC and any future content.
Do you guys have anyone with common sense in your company? AoE3 was treated by you like a trash in the last 2 years and still it convincigly beats AoM Retold. It would have even much better numbers if you invested in promotion of this game like you invested in AoM Retold.
I’m calling you one more time - split your development team for both those games, make Poland and Denmark DLC as you promised with following patches. We are not expecting patches every month. Just do what you promised, we are able to accept delay but not this treatment.
But AOM is a new game and AOE3 is free and AOM has other platforms and AOM has a lot of potential sp players that will buy the game and only play for one hour then drop and AOM also has a lot of potential esports players and AOE3 definitely does not have any of these and the AOE3 DLC does not seem promising and there must be a LOT of hidden internal high confidential data that imply these and we don’t know and…
In short: WE is wise and always correct. Whatever decision WE makes, it must be well-based, reasonable, insightful, and good for you and the AOE series.
That’s why chart contains data from 3 years, before Free To Play started. Even then AoE3 beat current AoM numbers which is crazy (considering AoM is brand new and hyped).
Tell me how many people would be willing to play a limited demo every day. The old game also had a demo and when I played it back then I got bored very quickly. It must be the same in this case.
It’s just a sample for people to try and decide (or not) to buy.
AOE-3 would have them too if they introduced proper campaigns. People want Napoleonic Wars or the War of the Triple Alliance, not a story about a fictional family.
If AOE-3 offered prizes, players willing to compete would also emerge.
The thing is, they’ve never done anything to make me have them.
Sure, Arena of Gods, and an AOE-2 DLC that’s practically an official mod, and a bunch of false promises for AOE-3 players prove it.
It’s funny to me that some people think there’s not really a genuine increase in numbers. It’s like no one else would think the game is great and decide to stick around and get the full thing.
Just check the ranked numbers, while not a perfect correlation we went from 3300 to over 5k during f2p. Clearly we have more regular full bought in users than before. All while WE invested the absolute bare minimum of money.
The world’s edge just want to kill the game because they hate Age of Empires 3. It is not similar to AOE2, and make AOE4 look like a work with rough picture, old mechanism and lack of content. And the age of myth? It’s more similar to Age of Empires 2, which these Aoe3 haters prefer.
It’s not to justify everything that happened, but the truth is that the argument of “they have more players” matters little to them.
In fact, I think that if we magically increased the numbers and gathered more players than AoE2 and AoE4 together, we would still not develop, it’s regrettable.
I’m not too knowledgeable about games going F2P but from my basic understanding, the things you should do EW did the exact opposite…which is why I feel like they set the game up to fail by going about it half-assed.
What part of the story is not understood, that the metrics have nothing to do with the decision taken? We clearly have more players and yet they removed support from us, the reason comes from somewhere else.
They have to stop the “It can’t be that AoM has less players and still has support” discourse, because it prevents us as a community from solving the real problems, don’t be stubborn.
