Funnily enough CS1 has seen an uptick in players recently. It surpassed CS2's daily player count. The 24 hour peak is almost 4000 more than CS2 yesterday. 10k to 6k rounding up.

Let me be clear, I don't wish for this game to die. CS1 is my most played game of the last decade. I really wanted CS2 to be that going forward. Before Cities Skylines, the game I've put the most time into in my life was SimCity 4. When Sim City 2013 came along I thought just like you that there's no way that one of the most beloved video games series of all time crumble like this.

Reality is CS2 has just as much a chance to be abandoned as SC13. It really hinges on what they do next. If it's not a bug fix or mod support they're doomed. If they really start pushing DLC and tie bug fixes to that, the message is clear. They don't care about the quality of the game and it's just another cash cow. And let's be crystal clear. Since Paradox went public this game lasting will be more dependent on what sales look like going forward. We've already seen cracks in that when Paradox released their investor call and showed disappointment in CS2's post launch performance. That will kill this game.

Ultimately this game can die not because they decided to stop working on it or Paradox breaks from CO. It will die because nobody will want to support it. It will die because modders will abandon it and move on. Investors can pressure them to leave it behind. The community that supports it will leave. A game like this thrives with a community behind it. If that community decides to abandon it, then this game will fade away despite CO/Paradox's efforts to keep it afloat.

Everybody is looking at this game like it's the next No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk. That blind hope is great if you like the game, but to everybody else this has the same chance to be Cities XL, or worse Sim City 2013.