No Man's Sky is in the Top 20 games on Steam by the number of online users

The number of one-time players in No Man’s Sky on the Steam platform fell from 212 thousand to 40 thousand players in a week. Despite this, the game is still one of the most popular among players. The project is in the Top 20 in terms of the number of online players.

The release of No Man’s Sky came out loud. The game on the day of the start of sales could boast of more than 212 thousand users who are in the game at the same time. This is the fifth launch in the history of the Valve platform.

But a serious drop in the number of online players began at the game on the very first weekend. As a result, on the first Sunday after the release, August 14, a maximum of 127 thousand users were in the game at the same time. A week later, on August 21, their number decreased even more, to 44 thousand.

Dynamics of the number of one-time players in No Man’s Sky
Despite the fact that the game lost 3/4 of one-time users at the end of the first week, this was quite expected.

The excitement around the release stimulated not only sales, but also the fact that all buyers entered the game immediately after its acquisition.

If you look at the number of one-time Fallout 4 or Grand Theft Auto V players, it’s also easy to see a significant decline after the first days of sales. Another thing is that for these hits, it was not 78%, but about 20-30% and begins at the end of the second week of sales, not the first.

Dynamics of the number of one-time players in Fallout 4 in the first week of sales
Alarming in the indicators of No Man’s Sky and the minimal increase in online over the weekend.

The spike was barely noticeable – it was about a few percent.

The drop in interest can be attributed both to inflated expectations about the game among most users, and a number of technical problems that players have encountered. We are talking about both an unoptimized engine and inconvenient management for PC owners.

Perhaps if we were talking about an MMO or a multiplayer game, retention rates would be higher.

Despite this, the online performance of the game remains very high. The game is included in the top twenty games by the number of one-time players on Steam.

Top 20 games on Steam online on August 21
Sales of the game were also very active at first.

If on August 13, the second day after the release, the project had almost 400 thousand copies sold (most likely, such a start can be explained by a large number of pre-orders), then three days later it was already 700 thousand.

Number of owners and total players in No Man’s Sky
But then the growth of purchases slowed down dramatically.

So the project could not overcome the mark of 1 million copies sold on Steam in the first week. However, purchases are growing, as is the number of game owners. Mass returns have not happened at the moment. By the end of Sunday, the total number of owners of No Man’s Sky reached 746 thousand people. This is 17 thousand more than at the end of last Friday. In other words, the game’s sales figures are also still enviable.

When preparing the material, the following services were used: SteamSpy, steamdb.info