'Doom: The Dark Ages' Fails To Achieve Even Half The Peak Concurrent Players Of 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard'
Doom: The Dark Ages only managed to obtain a peak concurrent player count of just 30,812 in its first day of release, less than half of what Dragon Age: The Veilguard did back at the end of October.
As noted by SteamDB, Doom: The Dark Ages only hit a peak concurrent player count of just 30,812 in its first day of release. That was only good enough for 60th on SteamDB’s Most Played Games list sorted by 24-hour peak.
The game was beat by Stellaris, Palworld, ARK: Survival Evolved, and 7 Days to Die. In fact, it just barely beat games like Cyberpunk 2077, which released in 2020, and Monster Hunter: World, which came out in 2018.
Furthermore, its peak concurrent players was less than half of what BioWare’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard achieved in its first day, which was 70,414. It would eventually hit an all-time peak of 89,418.
BioWare’s parent company, EA, eventually revealed that Veilguard missed sales expectations by “nearly 50%.” EA said in a press release, “Dragon Age engaged approximately 1.5 million players during the quarter, down nearly 50% from the company’s expectations.”
Doom: The Dark Ages does not appear that it will best the previous entry in the franchise either. Doom Eternal, which released to Steam in 2020 hit an all-time peak concurrent player count of 104,891. It hit that all-time on its release date of March 20, 2020.
Even the 2016 Doom title hit a higher peak on its release date. It hit a peak concurrent player count of 44,271.
What do you make of Doom: The Dark Ages’ player counts on Steam?
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Now that's a welcome surprise. I wonder what did it - the Denuvo DRM or the Day-1 DLC. Could also be the high price for a short single player campaign and multiplayer nobody cares about. I recently tried Eternal and it's a step back from Doom 2016. I can imagine Dark Ages following this pattern.
The previous entry, Doom Eternal, made the game much harder than it needed to be. Part of the fun of the original doom games and Doom 2016 was being able to carve a path of unmitigated death and dismemberment wherever you went in quick succession. Doom Eternal made it painstakingly difficult to achieve the same results and you couldn't get through an average encounter without dying multiple times, even on easier difficulties. While I enjoy harder games (like SoulsBorne), this franchise wasn't designed to be difficult.
As much as people praised Doom Eternal, it took the franchise in a far less enjoyable direction, and I think that's part of why we're seeing these results.