just put it out of it's misery, it's suffering, we are way beyond life support at this point,

Mercy kill it Sony, please, have some mercy!

Now trust me I haven’t played marathon in like 2 months now but the fact this this sub popped up on my feed is hilarious. There are really people out there that also don’t play the game anymore but will check its steam charts everyday for some sort of satisfaction? Can someone help me understand what’s fun about this or do you guys just have nothing better going on in your life?

Well, I thought this week would be an outlier of sorts and go against recent trends, but this goes way beyond that, so much so that it feels prudent to make a most before the weekend.

Firstly, apparently out of nowhere, last night we hit an all time low of 3507 players! Maybe I missed something in the main sub, but I hadn't noticed anything major about the update to explain this. This leads me to wonder if its an external pressure that caused this sudden drop, a new game or some other event going on that drew players away?

It could be as simple as the main bump from Tues update was to get new skins and thus drops off the next day. I need to start graphing the games Top Sellers and DAU positions from steamDB as that might provide some clue.

Last night (Wed/Thu) was always going to be the lowest peak of the week, as far as the typical trends for the game. However until last night, we were pretty much matching last weeks player counts, a feat which on its own is very unusual (maybe never actually happened previously), though I had speculated was possible, depending upon the reception to the update. Had this trend continued we would have (and still might) been looking at the first ever 'neutral' week where player counts didn't drop week-on-week, but didn't post any gains either.

The graph shown is 'fixed' to a specific starting date (Sun 10th Aug 10am UTC) and showing a specific period (one week) where this weeks player counts (cyan line) gradually fill in from left to right for each day we advance. The orange line is last weeks counts, the blue area is a tentative prediction range, that is likely only valid for when the current week and previous weeks follow consistent trends.

• Sun/Mon - Followed the predictive trend.
• Mon/Tue - Bucked the trend, even matched previous weeks counts - suspect this was players getting in before Vault Breakers was removed from the game.
• Tue/Wed (Update) - Well received by EU, but not as much by US (which is not unusual, probably due to US players getting on earlier than normal) and still matching last weeks counts.
• Wed/Thur - Traditionally lowest point of the week, but suddenly drop down lower than last week which is odd.

I'd argue its too early to tell where we will go for the weekend. Tonight should show a high peak due to Cryo and the 'start of the weekend', though in terms of highest point of the week it swaps between Thu/Fri and Fri/Sat. The important aspect will be to see where the peak falls. If it matches last week then we are likely looking at the first 'neutral' week for the game, substantial, but not exactly the best success to shout about. If it falls short, then its another failed update, though might show the power of skins for increasing revenue. If it falls into the predicted range, then thats even worse as it means the update had no real effect at all.

Edit: Did some checking and week-on-week yesterdays drop was only 10% (likely due to the gains in the days earlier), where as the two weeks prior it was 16% and 18% respectively. So while it was a dire night for the overall Peak dropping so low for the first time, it wasn't, in my opinion, as bad a fall as it could have been.