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  • In the video game industry, there's always something else for gamers to play, and new

  • games risk losing their player-bases almost as soon as they get them—a fact these games

  • found out the hard way.

  • Here are the hotly anticipated games that lost most of their playerbase in just a few

  • short months.

  • Tom Clancy's The Division

  • Ubisoft's much anticipated third-person shooter The Division launched to critical acclaim

  • in March 2016.

  • By Juneonly three months laterthe game had lost 93 percent of its player-base, falling

  • from 2.1 million players per day to a mere 143,000.

  • While the online shooter was by no means a bad game, The Division had its fair share

  • of problems.

  • Matchmaking issues and stat bugs stunted gameplay, with cheating and hacking plaguing the Dark

  • Zone.

  • These days, The Division is all but dead, with less than three percent of the game's

  • launch-window peak still playing.

  • It's tough to imagine Ubisoft feeling too bad about the drop-off in players, howeverseeing

  • as they raked in $330 million in five days.

  • "Now to sleep the sleep of the just."

  • For Honor

  • Hitting shelves in February 2017, Ubisoft's For Honor promised explosive player-versus-player

  • combat, with gamers able to fight as either knights, samurai, or vikings in a medieval

  • setting.

  • Sounds incredible, right?

  • Like many games from the top-tier French developer, For Honor lookedand in many ways, wasawesome.

  • Unfortunately, severe technical issues rewarded Ubisoft with a 95 percent reduction in the

  • game's player-base in only three months.

  • In a game that's all about thinking ahead and executing quick reactions, Ubisoft's decision

  • to run For Honor over a peer-to-peer connection completely ruined the experience.

  • Players who bought For Honor at launch were seriously disappointed, and even organized

  • a boycott of the game.

  • Nobody wants to see a game fail, butunfortunatelyFor Honor just couldn't keep players interested.

  • No Man's Sky

  • This game promised it allsome 18 quintillion planets, nearly unlimited exploration, epic

  • battles, and space dinosaurs.

  • So what went wrong?

  • Well, it turns out that the infinite reaches of space can be kind of...boring.

  • No Man's Sky peaked on launch day, grabbing upwards of 212,000 concurrent players on Steam.

  • Less than a week later, 78 percent of those who gave Hello Games' space exploration title

  • a shot simply gave up.

  • Not even two full months later, No Man's Sky was seeing less than 1,000 players per hourresulting

  • in a 94 percent drop in only 42 days.

  • Street Fighter V

  • Launched in February 2016, Street Fighter V was supposed to be a major console exclusive

  • for PlayStation 4.

  • Sadly, the vast majority of players who picked up the famous fighting game tapped outand

  • tapped out quickly.

  • Plaguing the launch of Capcom's title was the stark lack of content and no Arcade Modethe

  • bread and butter of the Street Fighter franchise.

  • Even worse, rampant rage-quitting soured gamers' experience in multiplayer matches.

  • Quitters ultimately got what was coming to them, but the early damage was done.

  • The poor experience was enough to put over 75 percent of players off the game, and most

  • people who left Street Fighter V never returned.

  • "Game over!"

  • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

  • Admittedly, most people put down single-player-only games after they've beaten the main story.

  • Nevertheless, Resident Evil 7 saw 90 percent of its playerbase disappear after only one

  • month on the market.

  • At the game's peak, it averaged roughly 15,000 players per hour on Steam.

  • One month later, that number had dwindled to 1,500 per hour.

  • Rapidly declining player-base aside, Resident Evil 7 was a pretty big success for the franchise,

  • with launch numbers doubling that of Resident Evil 6, and with the game being received well

  • by both critics and fans alike.

  • Still, at its best, Resident Evil 7 topped out at #19 on Steam's charts, and shareholders

  • apparently weren't impressed.

  • Fortunately, none of that looks like it's putting a damper on Resident Evil 8.

  • Evolve

  • It only took one month for 2K Games' multiplayer-centric Evolve to feel the pressure of a rapidly-declining

  • player-base.

  • Not only did the game receive mixed reviews, but its expensive DLC package certainly didn't

  • leave a good taste in any gamers' mouths.

  • The game saw its player-base dwindle on almost a daily basis, steadily decreasing until Turtle

  • Rock Studios had no choice but to swallow their pride and make the game free-to-play—a

  • last resort for a game that released at full-retail.

  • Making the game cost nothing effectively injected some life into the title, but the boost didn't

  • last long, and you'll find yourself sitting in a matchmaking lobby for a long time these

  • days.

  • Battleborn

  • Gearbox Software, the studio behind the popular Borderlands series, poured more than two years

  • worth of resources into the creation of Battleborn, only to have their first-person game completely

  • overshadowed by Blizzard's outstanding Overwatch.

  • Battleborn had such a rough launch, in fact, that the game only saw an abysmal 12,101 concurrent

  • players on release day, and absolutely plummeted in the days and weeks that followed.

  • In a desperate attempt to keep the game alive, the developers have made the game essentially

  • free-to-play.

  • Sometimes, the stars just don't align.

  • Pokémon GO

  • Niantic's mobile app Pokémon GO took the world by storm when it launched in July 2016.

  • By September, however, the game was all but abandoned.

  • According to reports, Pokémon GO peaked on July 13th, 2016, with 28.5 million users in

  • the United States alone.

  • Nearly nine million of those users quit playing by the end of the first month.

  • By the following month, almost two-thirds of the app's peak users decided they'd had

  • enough of the craze.

  • Nevertheless, Niantic had a major hit on their hands, proving that the Pokémon brand is

  • as viable as ever.

  • Titanfall

  • Released just a few months after the Xbox One, Respawn's first iteration in the Titanfall

  • series was slated to be the first true "next-gen" title.

  • Sadly, the game was hamstrung by content, and saw its player-base dropped off quickly.

  • The biggest problem was that Titanfall wasn't just "an online shooter."

  • It was, for all intents and purposes, an online-only first-person shooterlacking a single-player

  • campaign, or any content for users not looking to play the same multiplayer matches day in

  • and day out.

  • Plus, being an Xbox One exclusive severely limited the player base to begin with, and

  • many of the console's gamers moved on quickly to other titles.

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In the video game industry, there's always something else for gamers to play, and new

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