Kingdom Come: Deliverance is the biggest new Steam title of 2018, and certainly one of the most talked-about and controversial games of the year, but it seems all the publicity and debate hasn’t translated into a healthy playerbase. According to the Steam stat trackers at GitHyp, KC:D has lost 95 percent of its playerbase since launching in February.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which sold over 1 million copies across all platforms within two weeks of its launch, peaked with 96,000 concurrent players on February 19. That’s more than any new-release Steam game this year, including major titles like Far Cry 5 (92k peak players) and Warhammer: Vermintide 2 (73k peak players). KC:D’s playerbase remained strong for a couple weeks, but then a steady downward trend began – currently the game is hovering in the 2k to 4k concurrent player range. This doesn’t paint the entire picture, as KC:D is also available on GOG and consoles, but the Steam version is most popular and likely an accurate indicator of what’s going on across all platforms.
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Of course, single-player games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance don’t retain players as well as multiplayer games, but similar titles like The Witcher III and Skyrim have done a much better job of maintaining a steady, healthy base. Throughout the past year, The Witcher III’s player count has consistently remained in the 12k to 20k range, while the 7-year-old Skyrim continues to hover around 10k to 15k. People will continue to play these types of large-scale RPGs if the experience is satisfactory.
Which brings us back to Kingdom Come: Deliverance – the game launched with long list of bugs and issues, and developer Warhorse Studios has been slow to deliver promised patches, dimming many fans’ initial enthusiasm. There’s also the possibility the game’s brief popularity was somewhat of an artificial fad, partially driven the popularity of KC:D creator Daniel Vávra amongst GamerGaters and other reactionary online communities. Will Kingdom Come: Deliverance be able to rebound, or has its brief time in the spotlight already come and gone? We shall see.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is available now on PC, Xbox One, and PC.
