According to steam charts, less than 50% of players came back to Season 3 from Season 2. As of steam charts goes that number could be far worse since data looks to start collecting data efficiently as of November which is 1 month after S2 was released.
This would be a smaller sample size of the overall customer base but would be a clear indication of how bad this trend is.
On the other hand POE has had an increase of 40-75%+ players on their seasons since the release of D4.
D4:
Mid S2: 30k Players
S3 Start: 12k Players
Net Loss 60%+ players
POE:
November 2022 League start (Before D4 was released): 120k Players
March 2023 League start (Same time as D4 Beta released): 210k Players
July League Start: 165k Players
December League Start: 170k Players
Net Increase 40%-75% Players
It will be fun to see how this plays out, but I think we already know 
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There are things to consider when looking at these things.
POE is a great game that is free and has been around for over 10 years now.
Diablo 4 is a game that is 70 dollars and has been around for 7 months.
Diablo as a franchise has been around for almost 3 decades. After the abysmal launch of D3, a lot of players noped out of Diablo and explored other avenues like F2P POE. It is a little disappointing to see a fall from grace by them. They did recover a little with ROS but the damage was done.
Diablo 4 launch was also very rocky and continues to be. I am truly hoping for vast improvements over the next 6 months or the only endgame D4 is going to have is no players.
I think a lot of the concerns are overblown and over critical because they expected more from a Diablo series but there are very valid concerns.
I am not complaining about anything one way or another but there is a good reason why POE has so many more players. Definitely happy for them though.
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why dont you leave these metrics to the people who care about them at blizzard?
People here are soooo into all kind of metrics for whatever reason.
let alone the steam population is a tiny fraction of d4 but anyway.
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Ah, here it is. Dev on his burner account telling me to look the other way. I see you, I see you.
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yea, because you know, the devs own blizzard. they must do dmg control.
Grow up honey.
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I do agree. Basing it off of one metric which is Steam that has had POE on it for quite awhile makes the numbers look very very skewed. Context is important.
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You do realize that steam doesnt own the world of gaming right?
The numbers dont account for all the players that just bought the game and run it outside of steam.
Also, some steam accounts are duplicates of another platform, so those numbers are further skewed.
Nice TL;DR troll post though. A for effort.
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so true. Hence why i said, leave metrics to people who can fully read them. xD
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Season 2 also marked the release of D4 on Steam. You can’t act like all players came for S2 only.
Half of Day 1 launch players playing a game 2 months after release on Steam is very decent.
PoE, while a very good game, its a F2P game. Repeat after me “Path of Exile is a Free 2 Play game and this is the very main reason why it has so many players online!”
If D4 was free to play, even in the current state, it would have had tens of thousands on Steam online.
With whom you did math at school ? With the …cleaning lady ?
- 28,836 all-time peak 2 months ago
- 14,665 24-hour peak
While PoE always had this kind of online when a season started since 3 (?) years ago.
But anyway :
PoE : Free to play game - * 42,883 24-hour peak
D4: $70 game - * 14,665 24-hour peak
From a business perspective, I would take almost 15k players ANY day vs 42k free players, where statistically speaking, only a very small procent spends real money in-game.
Oh and… I got trolled 
Joined
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You just here for trolling.
Carry on “lad” … carry on!
PS: And the very, very bulk of D4 players don’t play on Steam. They play it on BNet, PS5, XboX, etc …
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Ah yes the Blizzard fanboy death roll. I would love to believe you but there’s too much empirical evidence suggesting a correlation between twitch, Steam, and player retention. It kinda goes like this for me: friends quit, twitch number drops, steam number drops, content creators move on, game dies. We are in between content creators moving on and game dying right now. But i’m sure the white knight copers will play extra long this season to prove us all wrong or more commonly, flame Blizzard doubters on the forums 
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isnt it time for you to move on then?
Naw. Just living in reality. I am not defending blizzard or this game. My comment was about the OP post and how those stats are skewed and may not represent the truth.
But hey, not surprised you and those like you who are angry at this game only see posts as “fanboi” if it is anything other than hating on the game.
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I’m not sure what posts like this accomplish. Blizzard knows how many people are playing, so you aren’t telling them anything. The rest of us can judge the game for ourselves and choose to play or not based on whether we are having fun. It costs nothing but a little time to try a season out.
But if the point is just to have fun debating the popularity of D4, there are several points worth mentioning:
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D4 launched on Steam right at the start of S2. While some of the people who bought it may have already owned it on another platform, most of the players were playing for the first time. So this is a dropoff more equivalent to the first couple months of launch. 40% retention 3 months after launch is actually pretty good
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It’s further complicated by the holiday season, when many more players may have had time. I know I fully intend to play this season but got my first chance to play for about 20 min yesterday and won’t be able to get back on for several more days due the post-holiday hangover at work.
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You are comparing a POE Dec league start to a D4 Jan one.
It’s great that POE is getting more interest because of D4. That good for the genre, and good for the players of both games. I’m sure the D4 devs wish they were the ones getting more players, but if the players are out there, then they have a reason to fight for them.
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You and the rest of us normal people.
Im just here for the copium and you dilvered. If the content creators left, they left because they cant make money off interest of said game. Fanboys seem to really get triggered by this fact 
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Why are we hoping for improvements over the next 6 months? This is a $70 game by an established developer. Should have been launched in the state you hope it achieves in 6 months. Just an utter utter failure on Blizz’s part
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How about try to find Battle_net charts? Many dont use Steam to play Blizzard games.
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I’m curious about why you left out the whole “drops to 12k players for 2 months before the new season launched” stat.
Diablo 4 sold horribly on Steam and POE has been quite successful on there. Not a good metric.
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D4 is a bad game, POE is a good game. That’s the difference.
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