Evolve Stage 2's popularity goes down, again

Turning Evolve into a free-to-play title seemed like a good idea to revive the game. However, after a brief spike of popularity, the number of players is in decline once again.

It seems that the success of the attempt to revive the PC version of Evolve by switching its distribution model from full-price to free-to-play was short-lived. After a brief increase of popularity, reaching its all-time peak of consecutive players on July 7 at slightly over 51 thousand, the number of Evolve Stage 2 players has since been steadily decreasing, settling under 15 thousands in the last 24 hours (that’s less than 30%) – according to Steam Charts. A similar tendency has been observed at the launch of the original Evolve back in early 2015. Although this does not necessarily mean that the game is doomed, it is certainly a warning for Turtle Rock.

Before the release, Evolve seemed to have all the things that the players love: asymmetric multiplayer with a terrifying monster and four classes of hunters, a measure of unpredictability, and a doze of spookiness – not to the mention experienced developer, who previously delivered the very popular Left 4 Dead franchise. The game even received some enthusiastic reviews from gaming media, but then players started to point out the balancing issues, numerous bugs, unreliable servers, and limited contents. The flames were fanned even further by the aggressive DLC policy and expensive Season Pass. Now Evolve Stage 2 is available for free on Steam.