OK, so maybe no-one has asked this question, and maybe some (including me, I admit) have suggested that Elite Dangerous is a dying game. I thought that given another game on the list I will put below is pretty much dead, much to the annoyance of those who liked its promising start, I wanted to see how Elite Dangerous compares to other MMO's currently still going, regardless of genre. So I looked up the numbers on
Steam Charts based on past 30 days:
| Game | Steam Charts Numbers |
| Final Fantasy XIV Online | 19,000 - 24,000 |
| World Of Tanks | 14,600 - 12,000 |
| World Of Warships | 8,300 - 7,300 |
| Elite Dangerous | 4,200 - 4,900 |
| Star Wars The Old Republic | 3,700 - 4,800 |
| Eve Online | 3,700 - 3,700 |
| Star Trek Online | 940 - 970 |
| Lord Of The Rings Online | 737 - 842 |
| Fisher Online | 517 - 612 |
| DC Universe Online | 412 - 505 |
| Dungeons & Dragons Online | 201 - 290 |
| World Of Warplanes | 129 - 138 |
| Champions Online | 72- 97 |
| Starbase | 39 - 64 |
A couple of things to note here: Some of these games listed have their own launchers and those numbers aren't included here because there is no information available on those numbers. One obvious omission here is World Of Warcraft for that very reason, it's not on Steam. Single player games like Cyberpunk are also not included in this list.
So, as far as player numbers go, Elite Dangerous is doing quite well, based on Steam numbers. Starbase is the game I mentioned earlier, and even reviews and discussions on Steam are warning everyone it's a dead game. The developers are still trying to keep the game going, holding an in-game event in a few days time, but players are not expecting a good turn out for it.
So why is mentioning Starbase relevant? It's a game where you play a robot, in space, building and piloting space ships, with activities such as mining, trading, salvaging and pirating, just like Elite. And like Elite has come under heavy criticism for the decisions made by developers to add or remove features from the game, and yet the player numbers are incredibly low.
Even a game like SWTOR is still going, with pretty decent numbers compared to Elite Dangerous. SWTOR is a little older than Elite Dangerous, having launched in December 2011, at about the time Elite Dangerous's kickstart launched. It has had constant support from the developers with regular expansions, has a thriving cosmetic store, is Bioware's #1 earner for microtransactions and yet has had people saying or asking if the game is dead, for years.
So to summarise: Is Elite Dangerous dead? No, not yet it isn't, and there's no reason to think it will die any time soon, but Frontier only need to make one mistake, and they could see player support for Elite disappear overnight. You might say Frontier have made many mistakes since 2014, such as offline mode, dropping VR support and console support, but these haven't resulted in player numbers dropping to levels where the game is dead, such as Starbase. Personally, I hope Frontier turn things around and Elite Dangerous is still going in 10 years time, after all, World Of Warcraft is still going strong nearly 20 years after it launched, so who knows?
If FD would stop bolting new half baked features on to the game and focus on fixing bugs and QOL issues, that would be great.
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