Evolve appears to have sold fine, but PC players are not sticking with Turtle Rock’s asymmetric multiplayer title. That’s a shame, because the game (when you get a match between people of roughly equivalent skill) can be really exhilarating.
2K’s pre-release DLC shenanigans and terrible PR handling soured people ahead of launch, but Evolve was at least trying something somewhat different in the multiplayer realm. The Steam chart data for the past week, however, shows a game losing players at a steady rate.
Release day saw a peak of 27,116 players. On 19 February the peak was 10,883. Just one week ago, on 12 February, the peak number playing Evolve through Steam was a much healthier 21,401.
If these were fluctuations (perhaps around holidays, weekends or Valentine’s Day) that wouldn’t be so concerning, but Evolve has been shedding players at a pretty steady rate. The last two or three days have seen the peak fall by at least 1,000 players (and sometimes closer to 1,500) each day.
It’s not all doomsday stuff, as a player-base of around 9,000-10,000 would still be pretty healthy if Evolve could manage to stabilise around that number. A free weekend on Steam (rumoured to be upcoming in the near-ish future) could do wonders for attracting a few new players too.
But at present Evolve is at risk of becoming another promising (albeit expensive) multiplayer game unable to sustain a player-base.
