The Cyberpunk 2077 playerbase looks to be largely done with the game. Even though the game has set a new record for sales with CDPR titles, with millions sold, it turns out that many players have already stopped playing about a month after launch. Around 79% of folks who bought the game at launch appear to have stopped playing, at least on Steam.
It’s possible that some people are just letting it sit on the shelf until the game is patched up a bit, which is something I hear commonly from both casual gamers and content creators. The dismal state of the game on consoles will take some time to fix, and there’s a ton of content that was cut from the release version which may be put back in according to rumors. So it could be that many of those players return to the game at some point.
Still, that the game has more than 200,000 players is incredible, and a height that most games will never achieve. it just goes to show that despite the myriad problems people still bought the game. The massive drop just means that the game is much more shallow and less engaging than many likely hoped for.
Here’s the detail that’s important, via Githyp:
While that 79% drop in players is worrying, many games see similar drops in single-player spaces. And while some single-player titles like The Witcher 3 are usually the exception thanks to their open worlds, other factors can be at play. For context, The Witcher 3 had only peaked around 92.000 players, and after a month on the market had dropped to around 50,000 at peak. And for a more interesting trend, the third game actually reached a higher peak much later in its life, thanks to new DLC and various promotions. This approach actually helped the previous big AAA title set a new record of 103k concurrent players on Steam. it appears as though CDPR is banking on a similar approach to paid DLC and restoring cut content with the future of Cyberpunk 2077.
While the drop wasn’t as severe, it’s probably worth also noting that newer franchises can sometimes struggle to hold player interest in the way that an established series can. CDPR probably isn’t sweating the loss too much though, as they already sold more than 13 million copies. I sincerely doubt those who held the purse care if people stop playing after buying the game.
