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No Man's Sky drops below 1000 concurrent players on steam

At least Sean should be just as amazed at the amount dropped as he was with the initial numbers.



Can't wait to see those posts that defend this saying its exactly what they expected. People should stop hating on the game. lol.

What's crazy is the people who were crucified on this very forum for asking "what do you even do in this game?". I guess not much of anything.
 

Surfinn

Member
Glad I waited.. game seemed like it would get old real fast.

Cool idea though. I hope they find a way to execute better if they try again.
 

CHC

Member
To put it into context, I just took this screenshot:

qmdclZx.jpg


A very similar game with far less mainstream "hype". I don't recall Elite ever being on an E3 stage. It's also a few years old.

GkpvETE.jpg


Also X3: Albion Prelude is the most niche space game out there due to game scope/difficulty (besides EVE), entirely singleplayer and been out since 2011. Then again it has a big modding scene. Not more than NMS yet, but a lot for this game.

In any case I was looking at some other games, these are great numbers too for entirely singleplayer games. Modding really keeps games alive:

lNxFNCC.jpg

433VNGH.jpg

9OgRwA6.jpg

Thanks for bringing some stats to this, I feel like in these situations it's easy to be like "lol bomba" without actually knowing the context, but in this case..... yeah it's pretty bad.

Not to sound smug but I'm glad I dodged the bullet on this one. I'm not without some degree of understanding towards Hello Games and the situation overall, but it's definitely been bungled. If you'd told me three months ago that I would not have even wound up purchasing No Man's Sky, and instead put 70+ hour into the newest WoW expansion, I would have said you're crazy. But sometimes shit is just weird like that!
 

WaterAstro

Member
How does this have anything to do with your assertion that Deus Ex would have always dropped to below 5k no matter what it launched at? You've done nothing to prove or explain this. Why wouldn't it just be the same monthly percentage drop as it has now?

I've explained it. No Man's Sky has 150 thousand more players at its launch. That's all it needs to be said.

Find me another non-multiplayer indie game price at $60 that has over 100k players at launch that has this same trend... you can't, because maybe this is how it's supposed to be for this type of game with that price.

It's the same thing that happened with Pokemon GO. With a billion people playing it at the start, no one should expect anything but an insane drop of players in a month.

But that's precisely why this is such an exceptional case.

For a game to hit as high of a peak as 200K concurrent, and THEN fall to such a low well beyond the typical low in only 2 months is a massive sign that the game was not holding its playerbase. I'm not really sure why you're trying to debate this

Your assumption that this is just another NMS hate thread goes more to show where your biases lie though, so I'm not entirely shocked.

lol GAF talking about bias for NMS. That's real irony there.
 

Future

Member
All you do is fly around and mine shit. Of course people will stop playing this

There is no real story
The goal is weak
No game systems that create emergent behavior depending on combinations
All combat is terrible
Navigation is slow
Inventory management is tedious
Inventory management is frequent
Objectives repeat often
Objectives repeat no matter what planet or system you are on

It literally is almost exactly what "the haters" complained about when first shown. All the backlash from the lies told up to release isn't even the main problem. It's just not a very good experience

Now some people may actually get engrossed in the visuals and get satisfaction of seeing new planet visual combinations. And if you do....enjoy. Because that's all you are getting
 

MUnited83

For you.
There's more reasons for the lack of new customers than "buzz". The price is the biggest factor as well as being on Steam, where everyone expects your game to go on a big sale.
.

Not really. Data supports that most of a game's sales on Steam will be made at launch.

The game stopped selling because of the terrible word of mouth. It is as simple as this.
 

Lothars

Member
It literally is almost exactly what "the haters" complained about when first shown. All the backlash from the lies told up to release isn't even the main problem. It's just not a very good experience

Now some people may actually get engrossed in the visuals and get satisfaction of seeing new planet visual combinations. And if you do....enjoy. Because that's all you are getting
and you know that the content is not coming how? So if the content that they are promsiing comes out will you be eating your words or just pretend?

I am not surprised that it had such a drop off of players but I can see it recovering decently if the promised content comes out.
 

hamchan

Member
I've explained it. No Man's Sky has 150 thousand more players at its launch. That's all it needs to be said.

Find me another non-multiplayer indie game price at $60 that has over 100k players at launch that has this same trend... you can't, because maybe this is how it's supposed to be for this type of game with that price.

It's the same thing that happened with Pokemon GO. With a billion people playing it at the start, no one should expect anything but an insane drop of players in a month.

You want me to find you another non-multiplayer indie game priced at $60? That's ludicrous because we both know that doesn't exist. I'm not buying the "it's supposed to be this way argument" too, since the $60 price and premise of NMS would have suggested that it's the type of game that should have retained users if it were good. You using Pokémon GO as an example doesn't fit since that's a jump-in, jump-out F2P game, the opposite business model to NMS.

That doesn't answer the Deus Ex question. Why would Deus Ex have still dropped to 5k if it had launched bigger? The "it has more players at launch" argument doesn't hold weight at all considering we can use plenty of other games with big launches like Fallout 4 or fairly big launches like Dark Souks 3, The Witcher 3 and see that the numbers don't drop as badly as NMS.
 

Seventy70

Member
What's crazy is the people who were crucified on this very forum for asking "what do you even do in this game?". I guess not much of anything.
It's hilarious. Anytime someone would ask a reasonable question, the response would be, "You don't know anything!" Anytime there was some skepticism citing other games that promised similar things and ended up disappointment, the response was, "This game is completely different!" It was one of the most delusional hype trains I've ever seen.
 

Smellycat

Member
Is it bad that every time I watch a video of Sean, I can't help but notice the way he talks is sleazy and reminds me of con artists?
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
So, is Sean Murray or anyone from Hello Games ever going to resurface? I can't believe there hasn't been a statement after all their lies.

I would be a bit surprised to see them survive this.

I obviously don't know what their deal looked like, but with the bad word of mouth, short tail on revenue and potential for lawsuits related to stealing formulas for the procedural generation of the worlds...

maybe I'm wrong, but for such a small company this seems like more than they are likely to be able to weather.
 
To put it into context, I just took this screenshot:

qmdclZx.jpg


A very similar game with far less mainstream "hype". I don't recall Elite ever being on an E3 stage. It's also a few years old.

I think this is a really good comparison as it's the most comparable in a lot of ways even though it's not a perfect 1 to 1. They're both space exploration games with procedurally generated universes and content, where you can (purportedly) focus on trading, pirating, combat, etc upgrading your ship. Elite does have multiplayer but it's not the focus and it's largely a single player experience. Both are built to not really have an "end" in the traditional sense and to be experiences that you can just keep playing as long as you want.

And that last part is the most important. People trying to compare NMS to other single player campaigns as justification for the drop are forgetting the fact that that's not exactly how the game was billed. It's supposed to be a vast universe with 18 quintillion planets. There were people on this board imagining they'd be playing this game for years to come and still not see all that it offers. It was compared over and over by Murray himself as the type of game Minecraft players would be in to. A game with no "end" and practically unlimited potential for exploration and play. You don't build a universe that big so that people can play an 8 to 10 hour campaign and be done. If you think that was the goal they had in mind here, I think you'd be mistaken.
 
I would be a bit surprised to see them survive this.

I obviously don't know what their deal looked like, but with the bad word of mouth, short tail on revenue and potential for lawsuits related to stealing formulas for the procedural generation of the worlds...

maybe I'm wrong, but for such a small company this seems like more than they are likely to be able to weather.
Wait. What?
 

flkraven

Member
Is it bad that every time I watch a video of Sean, I can't help but notice the way he talks is sleazy and reminds me of con artists?

Scumbag Murray. The closer the interview videos get to release, the more uncomfortable he acts. It's almost as if he justified the lies to himself as 'ambition' whereas the closer to release, the more solid the final product is, and he is now just outright lying. You can even see sometimes he wants to tell the truth, but then he is intentionally ambiguous as dollar signs fill his eyes.
 

Cerity

Member
I remember watching it drop with some amusement, it was 96% or so of the original playerbase a month out.

FWIW the only other major games that came out this year to come close at one month were DOOM, Stellaris and Battleborn at around 85% of release day CCU (According to PCCG). The only other games to come out this year that came anywhere near close 2 weeks out (NMS' playerbase had dropped 90%~ by then) were a bunch of visual novels and games that can be finished in <5 hours. Stuff like RWBY and TWD: Michonne. The steam spy creator has a sheet on his twitter if you go back far enough concerning those 2 week drops.
 

jax

Banned
I had $60 worth of fun. I'm glad I didn't get a refund.

This drop ain't surprising in the least though.
 

Makonero

Member
It's hilarious. Anytime someone would ask a reasonable question, the response would be, "You don't know anything!" Anytime there was some skepticism citing other games that promised similar things and ended up disappointment, the response was, "This game is completely different!" It was one of the most delusional hype trains I've ever seen.

Let's not forget that debacle where Jason Schreier announced correctly that the game was delayed and people sent him death threats. The hype for this game was beyond sanity.
 

Jebusman

Banned
lol GAF talking about bias for NMS. That's real irony there.

I'm not really sure what this is supposed to say other than "lol u mad"?

Like are you going to address the fact that you are just determined to label anything that doesn't praise NMS as "another NMS hate thread"?

It's not like we're arguing feelings and personal opinions in this thread. It's numbers. Hard numbers.

And the numbers show that this game has fallen harder than any typical $60 single player game ever has. The whole "It peaked so much higher than everyone else" only makes the fall that much more apparent. If you don't want to see that then yeah, your bias to blindly defend NMS is showing.
 

Yukinari

Member
Is it bad that every time I watch a video of Sean, I can't help but notice the way he talks is sleazy and reminds me of con artists?

All the compilation videos that include the Colbert clip and the interview where hes asked a series of gameplay questions are the worst offenders.
 

D i Z

Member
I would be a bit surprised to see them survive this.

I obviously don't know what their deal looked like, but with the bad word of mouth, short tail on revenue and potential for lawsuits related to stealing formulas for the procedural generation of the worlds...

maybe I'm wrong, but for such a small company this seems like more than they are likely to be able to weather.

Soooo....Joe Danger sale on all platforms then?
 

RoyalFool

Banned
I wonder how many people got refunds in the end.

It's weird, on the one side the guy lied like a fucking champ.

But on the other, every single warning sign was there - delayed launch, review embargo, and when bad word of mouth started to leak out a sudden 'jesus patch' that would fix everything just you wait and see. A small studio who's previous titles were all various forms of shite and a complete lack of clarification on how key gameplay elements actually worked.

I try to just think of it as an interactive idiot tax. It's not even like they'll bother patching half that stuff in if the games already dead and buried and has a tarnished reputation.

Nobody won from this apart from half a dozen now very rich folk who seem to have forgotten how to social media.
 
You have to hand it to them, No Mans Sky may have been one of the best marketed games ever. Yes there was a lot of deceit going on, but I bought it at $60 based on the promising reveals and previews. I know a lot of you did too. I'll be super apprehensive about buying a Hello Games developed game in the future, but if their plan was to sell one and be done I think they succeeded. I personally stopped playing once I maxed my inventory and got to the center, which only took me 3 or 4 days. Maybe 20 hours worth?
 

Murkas

Member
I was checking out CEXs website during the games release, there were getting like a hundred copies a day and after a week it near enough matched the amount of stock they had for say Uncharted 4.

Looking at it now, CEX is selling the game for £32 and offer you £8 cash for the game, where as Uncharted 4 they're selling it for £25 and offer £11 cash.

I'm not sure how CEX actually work bit it sounds like they got too many copies and don't wanna spend much money when buying additional ones.
 

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
Guys basically any game that launched with 200k+ players, isnt a typical single player game, is also on ps4, has sci fi elements, uses a controller or has a soundtrack will drop 99% of its playerbase in 6 weeks. The only reason Deus ex is at 5k right now is because people think it is No Man's Sky. Probably snything would drop like NMS did. Probably.
 
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