Redfall has fallen to a shockingly low number of players for a multiplayer-focused AAA game that's barely two weeks old, newly emerged data reveals. This insight into the game's lackluster performance arrives shortly after one Redfall developer expressed a mixture of sadness and confusion over the game's poor reception.
Released on May 2, Redfall is the latest title from industry veterans at Arkane Studios, owned by Microsoft subsidiary ZeniMax Media. Though the majority of the developer's catalog consists of critically acclaimed experiences such as Dishonored and Prey, Redfall debuted as one of the lowest-rated Steam games of all time. Its poor critical reception dovetailed with seemingly lackluster sales which were likely additionally cannibalized by its same-day release on Xbox Game Pass.
And while Redfall's launch day player count already spelled bad news for the game, newly surfaced information shows that its player base is now plummeting to new lows. According to activity data scraped by SteamDB, Redfall peaked at 376 concurrent players on May 16. The same source reveals that the game's simultaneous player peak on Steam dropped below 1,000 on May 8 and continued a steady decline ever since. Based on its first 15 days on the market, Redfall is currently on course to drop below 200 daily players by the end of the month.
To put that number in perspective, The Witcher 2: Assassin's of Kings, a moderately successful single-player game from 2011, had a concurrent player peak of 582 on May 16. Gothic 3, a much more obscure single-player RPG from 2006, peaked at 630 simultaneous Steam players on the same date. For a more direct comparison, Arkane's 11-year-old Dishonored had 560 concurrently active players during the last 24 hours. In fact, every single one of the developer's games released in the last decade bar Wolfenstein: Youngblood had more daily Steam players than Redfall in this period.
Seeing how the troubled co-op shooter is also available on Xbox Series X/S and happens to be part of the Xbox Game Pass catalog, Steam is plausibly its smallest platform, popularity-wise. However, this newly emerged data still paints a bleak picture for a newly-released AAA game that spent years in development and is largely multiplayer-focused. While Arkane previously said it has ambitious plans for post-launch Redfall content, it's plausible its resolve to support the game will be impacted by its lackluster reception and dwindling popularity.
At the same time, the Redfall developer already started work on its next game. While not much is known about that mysterious project, Redfall's underwhelming debut suggests Arkane's upcoming game may mark a return to single-player experiences with RPG elements that the developer is known for.
Redfall is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: SteamDB