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Resident Evil 4 Remake Tops RE8’s Player Count to Become the Franchise’s Biggest Launch Ever on Steam
Resident Evil Village is the Biggest Launch Ever for The Series with Over 100k Players on Steam
Resident Evil 2 is the First Time the Franchise has Launched in Steam's Top 5 Most Played Games
Resident Evil 2 Remake on Track to Become the Biggest Launch in the Franchise
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard Launches at #1 on Twitch and #19 on Steam
Resident Evil 7's Playerbase Has Dropped 90% After Launching 1 Month Ago on Steam
New ‘Banned Footage’ Content Not Enough to Bring Players Back
After its first month on Steam, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard‘s playerbase has declined by a staggering 90% — going from an average of 15k players per hour at launch all the way down to 1.5k players per hour on Tuesday. Similar to what we’ve seen with many other singleplayer games released on Steam, it turns out that most players haven’t come back for seconds after their first encounter(s) with the Baker family or after finishing RE7′s final act.
What’s more troubling is that in an attempt to retain players, Capcom is offering a $29.99 season pass, which doesn’t seem to be helping. Even with the first wave of new content coming out shortly after launch, the ‘Banned Footage’ DLC on Feb 21 barely had any impact on the player counts which have already dropped down to lower than they were before the new updates.
Resident Evil 7’s Average Player Count Per Hour via GitHyp
Player counts will likely fall even lower in the coming months, however, Capcom’s additional free “Not a Hero” content should bring a large amount of players back in May 2017. The free DLC was even teased after the credits of RE7 and (spoiler warning) features the return of fan-favorite Chris Redfield.
After shipping over 3 million copies and receiving very positive reviews on Steam, Resident Evil 7‘s launch could be considered a huge success that helped revive the struggling series. Surprisingly, Capcom’s shareholders didn’t see things the same way and the company’s stock fell right after the game’s release.
Putting business and bias aside, there’s no question that Resident Evil 7’s launch has outperformed the past few entries in the franchise when simply looking at the player count numbers. As we originally reported, RE7‘s launch numbers doubled RE6‘s peak player counts from back in 2013. But even with 2x the players, RE7‘s debut on Steam still only managed to barely crack the top 20 coming in at #19 — a peak which the player counts haven’t come close to matching since then.