Dragon Ball FighterZ Player Base Already Down 80% After First Two Weeks on Steam

Dragon Ball FighterZ’s concurrent player count managed to break just over 9,000 this past weekend on Steam. But compared to its record-breaking launch, the most played fighting game ever on Steam didn’t have a good second week with the player base already down 80%.

Peaking at 44.3k players two weeks ago, DBFZ more than doubled the previous record-holder Tekken 7’s 18.7k players at launch. However, DBFZ’s player base has begun to decline at a much faster rate than Tekken, which took over two months to lose 80% of its player base.

Dragon Ball FighterZ Peak Players per Hour on Steam via GitHyp

GitHyp originally predicted that DBFZ would be the biggest fighting game launch ever on Steam. Yet, we also questioned if it had the staying power that fighting games seem to always lack. Players simply don’t tend to stick around for long after getting beat up on. And despite very positive reviews from critics and players alike, the same seems to be true with DBFZ even after all the hype.

That being said, fighting games don’t always die quick deaths outside of the fighting game community. The free-to-play, Brawlhalla, started with 7k players back in November 2015. And since leaving early access the Super Smash Bros.-inspired fighter has seen its player base grow over the past two years. Just this past weekend, Brawlhalla pulled in 11.6k concurrent players, topping DBFZ during the two games’ peak hours.

Oddly, even with its solid player base that continues to outlast other big name fighting games on Steam, Brawlhalla hasn’t caught on with the competitive FGC and wasn’t able to secure a spot at Evo 2018. The lineup for the biggest fighting game event of the year was announced last week where two Smash Bros., Street Fighter V, Tekken 7, and DBFZ will be headlining. That all could all change at Evo 2019 with DBFZ likely to drop down to SFV and Tekken 7 numbers and Brawlhalla pulling in more players than the big three combined.