We all know that according to some the game is dying since a few years and most of the time they'll show us some numbers from Steam Charts as proof.
http://steamcharts.com/app/359320
Problem with Steam Charts is that the data is not really reliable:
- PS4, Xbox and customers of the Frontier Store are completely ignored (which should be the most loyal players)
- Steam Charts only shows concurrent players which tells us how many Steam Users are in game simultaneously rather than the active player base
Why doesn't concurrent players tell us much? If anything it tells us how much time people spend in game and not how many people are playing it. If 24 people are playing the game for one hour a day and everyone starts at a different time, Steam Charts will tell us that only 1 person is playing the game. If they play for 24 rather than 1 hour Steam Charts will tell us that 24 people are playing the game which is an entirely different number.
If you still want to know if the game is healthy it probably makes more sense to visit Steam Spy because they tell us about the audience (unique player in 2 weeks). Allegedly there are 80,404 players who played the game at least once in the last two weeks via Steam. Problem with that number is that it isn't stored over time so when I tell you that it didn't change much over the last 3 years (it goes up and down between 65k and 100k) you'll just have to believe me or search my post history because I pulled that number repeatedly over the last few years. Another problem is that these numbers are just estimates and highly unreliable. There is no way to know the exact active player base unless you work at Frontier Developments.
http://steamspy.com/app/359320
But some people always argue that you could still see a trend when looking at concurrent players and post that link anyway. Now the worst part is that they will tell you to look at a graph that is at the top of Steam Charts and allegedly shows the performance of the game by comparing peak numbers.
There are two problems:
- Peak concurrent players are actually worse than average concurrent players simply because that number changes drastically on specific events (First Thargoid encounter, Planetary Landings released, etc.)
- The numbers the graph uses are wrong
I don't think I need to explain further why using peak numbers is a bad idea to judge the health status of a game, but why does the graph use the wrong numbers?
1. Go to Steam Charts and set the graph to one year.
2. Hover your mouse over the line and notice how many data points are used.
3. Count how many data points are in the first 3/4 and how many are in the last quarter of the graph.
It's 9 data points in the first 3/4 and 15 data points in the last quarter of the year. This means that the curve is flattened in favour of early peak numbers which makes it look like there would be a drastic decline in concurrent peak players.
In reality they just pick the best results of the first three quarters and put them next to the mixed results of the last few months, which is of course wrong:
So I took the numbers from Steam Charts and created my own graph using just 12 data points and added average concurrent players. It still looks like there would be a decline in players but that's most likely down to the first Thargoid sightings in early 2017 (if you look closely you can actually see that the numbers didn't change from Dec 16 to Nov 17...).
But how does the game perform since launch?
With average concurrent players:
(EDITjust noticed that there is something wrong with the months, give me some time to correct it looks like it's just the label, data should be correct 
...)
As said above, nothing of that really means anything. It doesn't matter how many concurrent players the game has on Steam. Is the game dying? Probably not. Is it normal that a game doesn't attract as many players as it did 3 years ago? Probably. Do we have any data about Xbox, PS4, Frontier Store or even about the actual player base on Steam rather than concurrent players? Nope.
http://steamcharts.com/app/359320
Problem with Steam Charts is that the data is not really reliable:
- PS4, Xbox and customers of the Frontier Store are completely ignored (which should be the most loyal players)
- Steam Charts only shows concurrent players which tells us how many Steam Users are in game simultaneously rather than the active player base
Why doesn't concurrent players tell us much? If anything it tells us how much time people spend in game and not how many people are playing it. If 24 people are playing the game for one hour a day and everyone starts at a different time, Steam Charts will tell us that only 1 person is playing the game. If they play for 24 rather than 1 hour Steam Charts will tell us that 24 people are playing the game which is an entirely different number.
If you still want to know if the game is healthy it probably makes more sense to visit Steam Spy because they tell us about the audience (unique player in 2 weeks). Allegedly there are 80,404 players who played the game at least once in the last two weeks via Steam. Problem with that number is that it isn't stored over time so when I tell you that it didn't change much over the last 3 years (it goes up and down between 65k and 100k) you'll just have to believe me or search my post history because I pulled that number repeatedly over the last few years. Another problem is that these numbers are just estimates and highly unreliable. There is no way to know the exact active player base unless you work at Frontier Developments.
http://steamspy.com/app/359320
But some people always argue that you could still see a trend when looking at concurrent players and post that link anyway. Now the worst part is that they will tell you to look at a graph that is at the top of Steam Charts and allegedly shows the performance of the game by comparing peak numbers.
There are two problems:
- Peak concurrent players are actually worse than average concurrent players simply because that number changes drastically on specific events (First Thargoid encounter, Planetary Landings released, etc.)
- The numbers the graph uses are wrong
I don't think I need to explain further why using peak numbers is a bad idea to judge the health status of a game, but why does the graph use the wrong numbers?
1. Go to Steam Charts and set the graph to one year.
2. Hover your mouse over the line and notice how many data points are used.
3. Count how many data points are in the first 3/4 and how many are in the last quarter of the graph.
It's 9 data points in the first 3/4 and 15 data points in the last quarter of the year. This means that the curve is flattened in favour of early peak numbers which makes it look like there would be a drastic decline in concurrent peak players.
In reality they just pick the best results of the first three quarters and put them next to the mixed results of the last few months, which is of course wrong:
So I took the numbers from Steam Charts and created my own graph using just 12 data points and added average concurrent players. It still looks like there would be a decline in players but that's most likely down to the first Thargoid sightings in early 2017 (if you look closely you can actually see that the numbers didn't change from Dec 16 to Nov 17...).
But how does the game perform since launch?
With average concurrent players:
(EDIT
...)As said above, nothing of that really means anything. It doesn't matter how many concurrent players the game has on Steam. Is the game dying? Probably not. Is it normal that a game doesn't attract as many players as it did 3 years ago? Probably. Do we have any data about Xbox, PS4, Frontier Store or even about the actual player base on Steam rather than concurrent players? Nope.
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