Games That Lost Their Entire Playerbase In 2025

It's really the best of times and worst of times for the gaming industry right now. The world is getting hyped for some of the biggest releases in gaming history, like "Grand Theft Auto 6." At the same time, industry layoffs are so common that concerned gamers have created entire websites dedicated to tracking the thousands of developers who are losing their jobs.

The gaming industry is more unpredictable than ever, and that really becomes clear when you start looking at the player counts on popular games. While 2025 is full of mindblowing new releases, this year has also proved that games can crash and burn just as quickly as they can skyrocket to success. Games with more than a million players have become ghost towns in the blink of an eye, and some titles have disappeared completely. At least half a dozen games have seen their playerbase empty out in 2025 — and most of them aren't even a year old yet.

The back of the box — if it existed — would make "Marvel Rivals" sound like a superhero fan's dream come true. The multiplayer hero shooter pits teams of famous Marvel characters against each other in fast-paced battles that could be ripped from the pages of a comic book. "Marvel Rivals" debuted in December 2024, and at the time it really felt like a breath of fresh air. Gamers poured in by the hundreds of thousands, and fans pointed to the game as an example of the free-to-play model done right.

But as is the case with virtually every live service game, all that excitement wore off in just a few months. "Marvel Rivals" lost nearly 80% of its players by May 2025. The game hit its peak concurrent player count of over 644,000 shortly after its release, but by the summer, it was clear that only about a quarter of those players would be sticking around for the long haul. "Marvel Rivals" started out as a game with mass appeal, but even though the majority of the players are gone now, the ones who remain are dedicated fans. Some other games weren't so lucky with finding their niche in 2025.

"MechaBreak" did a speedrun through the free-to-play life cycle. Amazing Seasun Games released its third-person mech combat game on July 1, 2025, and over 130,000 gamers showed up to see what all the fuss was about. In an ideal world, gamers would have found the next "Armored Core VI" waiting for them, but most players didn't think that was the case. "MehcaBreak" lost 70% of its players in 13 days, and the game hasn't really recovered.

There were two major problems plaguing "MechaBreak" when it first launched, and one of them was arguably easier to address than the other. Plenty of PC gamers had performance problems with the game, and they weren't shy about making their complaints known in their Steam reviews. Some players were also chafed by the monetization in "MechaBreak." Even though the developers made the paid content cosmetic-only, the game still took a hit for offering $30 skins in its store. 

Shortly after its debut, "MechaBreak" dropped down to Mixed review status on Steam, and it didn't bounce back. There's a ridiculous amount of competition in the free-to-play space, and with the negative reviews haunting "MechaBreak," the game couldn't pull in new players.

"Schedule 1" has all the hallmarks of a flavor-of-the-week game, which is actually part of its appeal. The premise is simple: You and your friends are trying to become the drug kingpins in the small town of Hyland Point. That means creating labs, hiring dealers, running from the police, and engaging in all sorts of other petty crimes that can make for a fun night of gaming. Developer TVGS released "Schedule 1" into early access on March 24, 2025, and by April 6 almost 460,000 people were causing chaos in Hyland Point.

The fact that "Schedule 1" lost nearly 80% of those players a month later isn't that surprising. Inexpensive party games aren't known for having a particularly long lifespan, but thousands of players discovered that "Schedule 1" is a lot deeper than its goofy premise implies. There are some really deep simulation mechanics and a surprisingly engaging factory upgrade system hiding under the surface of "Schedule 1." 

Even better, TVGS has a detailed roadmap of content it wants to add over the course of the planned two-year early access period. "Schedule 1" is one of those games that's going to keep chugging along, even if almost everyone who was there at the start is gone.

Single-player games are almost guaranteed to lose players faster than multiplayer games, but even by that standard, the decline of "Avowed" stands out. Obsidian is the legendary developer behind "Fallout: New Vegas," and gamers were optimistic for the studio to take on a sweeping fantasy RPG. "Avowed" launched in February 2025, debuting to mixed reviews all around. Unfortunately, the gameplay and storytelling didn't offer many surprises to fans of the genre, or anyone who's played an "Elder Scrolls" game before.

Partly due to those lackluster reviews, the player count for "Avowed" on Steam never managed to impress. The game peaked at just under 20,000 concurrent players shortly after launch, but within six months, fewer than 400 people were playing the game each day — a 98% drop. For comparison, "Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2" launched in the same month as "Avowed" and lost only 49% of its players in that same amount of time. As of August 2025, more people were playing Obsidian's previous game, "The Outer Worlds," than "Avowed."

Going through this list, we've been using the phrase "lost their entire playerbase" a little metaphorically. Games can lose 90% of their players or more without disappearing completely, but now it's time to talk about a game that actually lost all of its players in 2025. "Multiversus" was a free-to-play fighting game that could be summed up as "Super Smash Brothers" meets the intellectual property of Warner Bros. Studios. The game launched in May 2024 to mixed reviews, and its peak player count on Steam was just over 150,000.

In January 2025, developer Player First Games announced that it would be taking "Multiversus" offline at the end of May. Technically the game is still playable offline, but if you're just discovering that now, it's already too late. Players in the game needed to log in during the fifth and final season to create a local save file. According to SteamDB, a few dozen people just did that, but for the rest of the world, even people who previously spent money in the game, "Multiversus" doesn't exist anymore.

The death of "Multiversus" and other games like "XDefiant" has sparked a ton of conversations online. Streamer Pirate Software lost 90% of his viewers after criticizing a movement called Stop Killing Games, so clearly players don't like seeing games vanish. Games that lose their entire playerbase are still parts of gaming history, and a huge portion of the community wants to keep these titles alive — even if no one's playing.

Gamers get their hands on a new "Call of Duty" title almost every year, but it's not often that a new game in the series immediately falls on its face. 2025 might end up being known as the year that saw the death of the "Black Ops" series, after the seventh installment completely failed to impress longtime fans. "Black Ops 7" was supposed to be a fresh take on the long-running "Call of Duty" franchise, but fans ultimately hated much of what the game tried to do.

The "Black Ops 7" campaign drew plenty of ire online for being significantly less grounded than previous entries. Fans of the military shooter didn't appreciate the game's elaborate boss battles and combat setpieces that would have felt more in line with a sci-fi fantasy theme. 

Unfortunately, the campaign was just the first in a series of problems with the game. Early players found the game's multiplayer system to be a mess, rife with so many glitches it ruined the overall gameplay experience. It's been a long time since "Black Ops" was at its peak, but this game lost more than 50% of its active players in just a few weeks. That shocking drop-off has many wondering if "Black Ops" even has a future anymore.

"xDefiant" is another example of a free-to-play game gone wrong. Published by Ubisoft in 2024, "xDefiant" was an arena shooter that had tie-ins with other popular Ubisoft properties, like "Ghost Recon," "Splinter Cell," "Watch Dogs," and "Assassin's Creed." Matches allowed players to take control of characters from those franchises in heated 6-v-6 battles. The free-to-play multiplayer space is cutthroat and highly competitive, however, and "xDefiant" simply couldn't keep up with its peers.

2025 was the end of the road for Ubisoft's game. "xDefiant" officially shut down on June 3, making it one of just a handful of games that literally lost all of its players this year. The game's few fans aren't the only ones feeling disillusioned by Ubisoft's decision to unceremoniously shut it all down. The game's lead designer, Mark Rubin, who has a long history in gaming (which includes some time spent working on the "Call of Duty" franchise"), said on X (formerly known as Twitter) that he decided to leave the industry altogether after the death of "xDefiant." Rubin placed the blame for the game's failure on Ubisoft itself, suggesting that the lack of marketing prevented "xDefiant" from capitalizing on its enticing premise and promising gameplay.

The "Monster Hunter" series has a locked-in fanbase and typically earns plenty of goodwill from the gaming community. Gamers have been tackling the franchise's epic boss battles and survival-lite gameplay for years, and many of them were beyond excited for another new installment in the series. "Monster Hunter Wilds" debuted on February 27, 2025, and it didn't take long for players to realize that the new game didn't quite live up to its predecessors.

"Wilds" boasts breathtaking graphics, interesting exploration opportunities, and, of course, those epic monster fights. Unfortunately, the game is plagued by technical issues, primarily on PC. "Wilds" has mixed reviews on Steam with plenty of players reporting that the game barely runs on their computers. Gamers were frustrated that "Wilds" launched with such severe performance problems, but they're even more irritated that the devs didn't fix the issues at any point in 2025. 

"Wilds" peaked with just over 1.1 million concurrent players shortly after its debut, but players quickly left for other games. In November "Wilds" averaged just under 17,000 concurrent players. That's a jarring drop for such a beloved series, and fans will likely remember their disappointment with "Wilds" the next time a new "Monster Hunter" game comes on the scene.

"Splitgate," released in 1047 Games in 2019, wowed gamers with its innovative approach to multiplayer combat, becoming more than an underrated "Halo" clone. The game combines classic arena shooter mechanics with, essentially, the gun from Valve's "Portal" game to create a mind-bending, competitive multiplayer experience that requires players to keep their head on a swivel. The game's sequel, which promised to be bigger and better in every way, launched in June 2025 and quickly became an unmitigated disaster.

Players were unhappy with some of the gameplay decisions around "Splitgate 2," like adding a battle royale mode, but then a politics-adjacent controversy overshadowed all other conversations about the game. 1047's CEO Ian Proulx wore a black hat with the words "MAKE FPS GREAT AGAIN" emblazoned on it at Summer Game Fest, and the reference to President Donald Trump's infamous slogan sparked massive backlash. Less than a month after the game's release, "Splitgate 2" had lost upwards of 80% of its players.

1047 Games took a drastic step to try and turn the ship around. The studio pulled the game down, "un-launching" the sequel with intentions to re-release the game sometime in 2026. The studio has plans to revamp the game's combat, portal mechanics, multiplayer playlists, and ranked leaderboard system. The re-launch, which currently doesn't have a date, could be a chance for "Splitgate 2" to rise to the top. Or it could turn out to be another opportunity for the game to lose all of its day-one players.