The announcement that New World will not receive any further updates would have stung no matter when it was made, but just to add insult to injury, the news came when the MMO was making a huge comeback. As we reported recently, the future of New World was looking bright following some updates in mid-October.
However, with everyone now aware that no more updates will be coming, the playerbase has taken a huge hit. On Steam, the concurrent player count - the number of players online at one time - has fallen by more than 70 percent in the days before and after the announcement. Since then, the CCU has fallen even further, completely undoing the gains made last month.
On Steam, we can see that there was a huge spike in New World's CCU as soon as the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion was made available for free. On the day that the update dropped, there was a peak player count of 41,065, compared to 11,271 a month ago. Better yet, that figure kept rising, consistently staying in the 40,000 to 50,000 range, until the news that ongoing development had come to an end was shared.
This...
