Every year, developers face the serious challenge of keeping players, well... playing. 2024 has been no different, with games that might be able to make a comeback and those that were almost guaranteed to lose their first wave of fans.
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00:00Every year, developers face the serious challenge of keeping players, well, playing. 2024 has been
00:07no different, with games that might be able to make a comeback, and those that were almost
00:11guaranteed to lose their first wave of fans. First off, Helldivers 2 is still one of the
00:17biggest surprises of the year. Developer Arrowhead Game Studios likely thought that
00:21it would just be building on the niche success of its original 2015 game, but the sequel instead
00:26debuted as one of the most popular games of 2024. With excellent third-person combat and a truly
00:32unique approach to immersive and cooperative storytelling, Arrowhead's latest game quickly
00:37gained a massive player base. It just didn't manage to hold on to all of those players for
00:41very long. Helldivers 2 is still an incredible game, but it makes sense that 90% of the game's
00:47players have vanished. As a general rule, live-service games struggle to keep their numbers
00:51up on a consistent basis. The game's publisher, Sony, didn't help matters when it tried to force
00:56PC players to link their Steam accounts to the PlayStation Network. The game managed to pull
01:01through that catastrophe just in time for its stream of new content to turn into a trickle.
01:06Arrowhead taking more time with its updates is great news for the game's most loyal fans,
01:10but without a constant bombardment of content, most of its players — the ones who weren't already
01:14boycotting it after the PSN debacle, that is — started seeking out other games.
01:19In this time of need, Super Earth once again calls upon her mightiest,
01:24bravest, most obedient heroes.
01:27Palworld is another 2024 game that seemingly came out of nowhere and took the entire industry by
01:32storm. Pocket Pair's multiplayer survival game took more than a few cues from Pokemon,
01:37and that turned out to be a winning strategy. At its peak, Palworld had more than two million
01:42concurrent players, making it one of the most popular games in Steam's history. No game could
01:47keep up those kinds of numbers, and Palworld ended up experiencing a 97% drop in players a
01:52few months after its early access debut. With that said, Palworld still has a sizable amount of core
01:58fans, and the game has seen its concurrent player count jump into the mid-six figure range whenever
02:03new content rolls out. One of the game's devs fired back at the player base debate in early
02:07July, arguing that gamers should focus their attention on simply playing games they enjoy.
02:12That kind of fun-first approach is a big reason why Palworld didn't immediately drop off the
02:17map after its first few weeks as the game of the moment. It's likely that Palworld will
02:21continue to entertain its hardcore fanbase for a long time, but that initial drop-off
02:25briefly had some gamers predicting an untimely end for their adventures on the Palpagose Islands.
02:32The same week that Arrowhead launched Helldivers 2, Square Enix dropped a different PlayStation
02:41exclusive that started doing numbers. Foamstars actually outperformed Helldivers 2 that week,
02:46but the success wasn't meant to last. The game also started bleeding players way faster than
02:51Arrowhead's surprise hit, losing more than half of its players in just two weeks.
02:55Within a couple of months, over 90 percent of the Foamstars player base had evaporated.
03:00If Foamstars hadn't been up against 2024 giants like Helldivers 2 and Palworld,
03:04it might have had more of a fighting chance. The game received middling reviews and unfavorable
03:09comparisons to Nintendo's beloved Splatoon franchise, but it definitely had promising
03:14elements. Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly as polished as Arrowhead's PlayStation exclusive.
03:20Foamstars is still kicking around, but the game's fate almost entirely rests on how many resources
03:25Square Enix is willing to dedicate to improving the experience for active players.
03:29We were worried about Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League well before the game actually
03:34launched. The game suffered from some delays, and despite being a full-priced title,
03:38it looked like it was going to come with all the hallmarks of the worst type of live service game
03:42An expensive battle pass, generic missions and looter-shooter gameplay,
03:46and hefty grinding requirements didn't get many people hyped for the game,
03:50and the fact that many reviewers didn't receive advanced copies made Suicide Squad
03:54seem even more concerning. Leaked cutscenes and major spoilers generated even more controversy
04:00for the game, which felt like a bizarre shift from the highs of Rocksteady's Batman Arkham
04:04franchise. The game debuted to fairly poor reviews, and it started losing players almost immediately.
04:10God help us.
04:12Suicide Squad launched at the end of January, and by April, it registered an active player
04:16count in the hundreds. For a while, the game even had fewer players than 2020's ill-fated
04:21Marvel's Avengers. Like the other games on this list, Suicide Squad has continued
04:26crawling forward, with Warner Bros. continuing to produce content.