Player Count

[Kernist]

Opposite to what dev is claiming that majority is either positive or neutral about the change 90% of people here (at least) are not happy. The other 10% is strongly trying to convince us this 90% doesn't matter cause it wasn't playing the game anyway and game is doing very well regarding the player count.

Ofc it was during the Steam sale and these people tried to convince others (and probably themselves at this point) that Steam sale and game being -90% didn't matter. Ok, sale is over, how do statistics look now? Thankfully Steam charts have all the answers.

At the beginning of the sale game amassed a whooping 564 player peak. Wow, I bet all other fighting games envy Skullgirls for having such an audience, whatever. Good times don't last forever however.

It's been 2 days, only 2 days since sale ended. On 14th July the peak was 466 people. On 15th of July the peak was 414 people. Today we already passed the peak and it was...
345 people.

The average player peak during Steam sale was 500 people. That means in just the span of 2 days the number of active players lowered by 30%, and we have weekend right now. On top of that take into account that from what we can see in discussions here a lot of people are reverting back to pre-censorship version of the game which I assume makes them unable to play the game with people having updated version, that means playerbase is even further split .

Things don't look good. Is it possible that maybe the problem with the game is something other than pantieshots, Big Band's story art and "barely legal" comment? Where are the people who were supposed to buy the game now when all "pedo stuff" and "nazi stuff" is gone? Where are the people who received free game keys on twitter just to counterattack "toxic review bombing"?

It's over. Skullgirls had a very small community to begin with and dev successfully managed to split it and rally them to war against each other. At this point more people are voicing their dissatisfaction here than playing the game. Soon you won't be able to find a single person to play with and all that will be left is a memory that there was a time when you just enjoyed the game for what it was.

[Smug Hatterene]

The competitive players will stick around, but nobody cares about them.

[Mia]

I remember reading a comment a twitter saying Skullgirls’ future depend on the peoples spending ton of money on the Mobile game and, since the censorship, lot of peoples seem to have left. No money = no game.

[greenraven22]

250 new players is almost inconsequential given that the game was -90% off and was once an indie darling with good word-of-mouth from the community.

https://steamdb.info/app/364470/charts/

Elder Scrolls Legends, a game that has been officially "dead" since 2019, has more concurrent players than all the new Skullgirls players. That says something.

The sad part is that those numbers could have been much MUCH higher if the devs spent time engaging with the community instead of recruiting twitter weirdos to wage war on social media.

Seriously, if every person who screamed about "pedophiles" and "nazis" actually purchased the game and played it for about 5 hours we could easily have reached 5k players during the summer sale.

[Mia]

So then about about this?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3005441478

[Osmond_NLG]

I’m still waiting for the pro-censorship people to practice what they are preaching in supporting this product and get the player count up ABOVE 600.

At this point, it should be known after so many examples. It was freaking less than $3, where we’re they at? Can’t tell me they can’t pay less than $3, they are that broke? Yet can tell you that you all these degenerate words and place it onto backers.

[CCfan]

For reference, Skullgirls, even with the boost of the sale and the controversy, is still in competition with Street Fighter 4.

Yes, I said 4. Not 5, which has way more players, and let alone 6. Street Fighter 4.
The game with unplayable delay netcode from 2009.

Somehow, I doubt that the devs' brilliant changes will make a new bunch of new players suddenly show up, nor will do any good to the current tiny playerbase. Best case scenario the people that played the game before will keep playing anyway, but even if you're full-on competitive you have to see how this controversy did nothing good for the game and only produced a lot of bad blood.

Bad blood, for the game that survived only thanks to the undying support of its community.

[Kyrion]

It is genuinely sad... once the project still had soul it was very fun and deserved solid loyal niche who are not fully for 'newest bestest graphics' etc.. But a soul of project and it's identity overall seems to be a thing mostly beat up.

[Kernist]

New low - 307. Four days after game was -90%. Great.

[petran79]

Originally posted by Mia:

So then about about this?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3005441478

Skullgirls mobile is a different game alltogether with different playerbase

Companies that add mobile game principles on PC, do not fare well

[Nidstang]

Tbh, I'm willing to bet most of the player count burst was people seeing the censorship for themselves, or down-patching their games, not actually people playing.

[Kernist]

273 people today. 1 week after -90% sale game lost almost half of it's playerbase.

[fauxpolecat879]

Originally posted by Kernist:

273 people today. 1 week after -90% sale game lost almost half of it's playerbase.

Quite sad isn't it? I'm really getting the feeling this is the end of Skullgirl's support. Controversy never lasts, people will move on to the next big thing Steam recommends, and the game will be forgotten...

[Ommicron-Dagger]

Originally posted by fauxpolecat879:

Originally posted by Kernist:

273 people today. 1 week after -90% sale game lost almost half of it's playerbase.

Quite sad isn't it? I'm really getting the feeling this is the end of Skullgirl's support. Controversy never lasts, people will move on to the next big thing Steam recommends, and the game will be forgotten...

The question still remains, are they simply throwing this game under the bus because they've got big money coming in from the mobile version, or were they already struggling and needed better credit lines fast, so tried to speedrun their ESG score?
And you are right about controversy not lasting. Logging in and seeing Overwatch2 on Steam's front page made me burst out laughing and forget about this for a moment. The fact that I got screwed by Blizzard on one of my most played and self-modded games of all time (WC3) and that I am also a TF2 player just made it more hilarious.

[roiwtto999]

i tried to look at skullgirls player base it went down hard it took me 45 min to find 1 player to match up but the uncensored previous version took me 10 min or less this is so funny the new IP killed the skullgirls franchise so fast

[Kernist]

Yep, not only this game has playerbase below 300, now it is also split by 2 different versions of the game.