Activision Blizzard has presented the financial report for the 2nd quarter of 2023, which ended on June 30. For game developer Blizzard, the 3 months were marked by the release of Diablo 4: Revenue figures have risen sharply, but player numbers have continued to decline despite the major release. Compared to the quarter that ended on December 31, 2022, almost every 2nd player from back then is gone.
How does Blizzard measure its player count?
- Blizzard refers to “MAU” – the monthly active user.
- A person can count as multiple “MAUs” if they log into different games. Someone who plays Diablo 4, WoW, and Overwatch 2 in one month counts as “3 MAUs” for that month.
- To count as a MAU, it is enough to log into a game once: The MAU value for a quarter is derived by summing the MAUs for the 3 months and then dividing that value by 3.
Blizzard’s player count falls from 45 million to 26 million
How have player numbers developed? Blizzard had its highest value in years half a year ago, in Q4 2022: There it had 45 million MAUs. This high number apparently resulted from the release of Overwatch 2 and the WoW expansion Dragonflight.
But already in the 1st quarter of 2023, player numbers had significantly dropped to 27 million.
Now one might assume that the release of Diablo 4 stopped the downward trend, but the opposite is the case: In the 2nd quarter of 2023, the number of MAUs fell to 26 million. Thus, Blizzard has 42% fewer players than it could report half a year ago.
Why isn’t Diablo 4 showing up strongly in the statistics? The release of Diablo 4 on June 5 came at an unfavorable time statistically. Because the MAUs only count for the month of June. They therefore only account for one-third of the statistics.
Moreover, it doesn’t help that people have played a lot of Diablo 4, because someone who looks at the game for 2 minutes counts the same as a player who is active for 200 hours.
Especially the hype around Overwatch 2 has diminished significantly
Why has Blizzard lost so many players? Three aspects come together:
- Blizzard had to withdraw from China, because the deal with NetEase fell through. Hence, only Diablo Immortal is still active in China.
- The boom of Overwatch 2 is gone. Apparently, many players checked out the game for free at release, but Overwatch couldn’t retain these players. The cancellation of the large PvE plans was a huge blow to the game.
- Hearthstone and WoW seem to have been losing players for months and can’t stop the exodus.
Despite fewer players, Blizzard achieves record revenue thanks to Diablo 4
Is Diablo 4 a success? Yes, it seems so. Blizzard managed to more than double its revenue compared to the previous quarter. From $443 million, it rose to $1.058 billion.
It is said that over 10 million players played Diablo 4 in June and invested more than 700 million hours.
Even though the 2nd quarter of 2023 was the weakest quarter in terms of players since the 1st quarter of 2022, it was Blizzard’s highest revenue quarter in a long time.
Blizzard is able to earn more money with fewer players.
However, even Diablo 4 is currently facing a backlash:
“Fun has been reduced by 95%” – Diablo 4 receives harsh criticism after patch for Season 1
