Only two weeks after launch on Tuesday, 20 February, Nightingale's concurrent player count has dropped to a fifth of what it was at launch. Aaryn Flynn, the CEO of Inflexion Games, said that he is “not satisfied” with the launch and that “there’s much more to do.”
He opens his statement on a positive note with a “heartfelt thank you to all of you for your patience and support”. However, he is quick to mention that “While we’re happy with some elements of our launch, we’re not satisfied with a number of others.”
He goes on to list the problematic elements such as “confusing or missing features for core systems like crafting,” and “important updates to combat.” He also mentions the various server issues players faced and adds that “there’s much more to do, and we wanted to share our next round of most important updates with you.”.
He also shared a full roadmap for the game and listed the various priorities they have for future updates. You can check out the full statement+roadmap here.
At the time of writing, the peak player count is at a mere 11,861 in the past 24 hours compared to its all-time peak of 47,569 concurrent players only 18 days ago.
Player count dropping for games is fairly normal, with massive new titles coming out every month. It's natural for players to jump ship or simply finish experiencing whatever the game has to offer. Even global hits like Palworld have experienced some of the largest drops in player counts. However, there seem to be other factors at play for Nightingale.
Nightingale is still in early access, and many players have opted to ignore the experience until the full release. Some players attribute it to a lack of quality-of-life features, while others feel there's a lot more to fill out with the game's procedural generation. Meanwhile, some were simply annoyed at crashes and bugs.
A post was made on Reddit where a user complained that, "I think the wise thing for the devs would be to delay the game for late 2024/ early 2025. Because if they release it in this shape it will die".
Others compared it to Palworld and said, "After Enshrouded and Palword, holy hell was the gameplay and menus absolute trash".
The statement is closed as the CEO adds "We look forward to sharing specifics on these updates with you very soon. Until then, happy adventuring in the Faewilds”.
Hopefully, we get to see Nightingale reach its full potential in the coming future.