The decline of eRepublik, an urban legend or an hard truth?
Mister Y
Hello everyone and happy new year again. After so long wait, I finally had the time to make the promised graphic about the whole eRepublik alive citizens with some explanations around the situation. This is my artwork (you can right click and see it bigger in another window):
You can see in the end of 2019 eRepublik counted around 46.000 alive citizens. Someone might perceive a slight decline in those months already, but it was totally meaningless.
From the middle of March, in fact, the population raised a lot and eRepublik gained 2500 new players (and players came back) in just a month. Everyone thinks that was due to the big lockdown caused by the first wave of coronavirus, and it was also the period, lasted six weeks, of the “Stay at home challenges”.
Anyway, the population dropped faster as it increased in the next months. I counted almost 1000 citizens less every month. These are the data:
1 May: 47.559
1 June: 45.947
1 July: 45.070
1 August: 44.288
1 September: 43.225
1 October: 42.054
1 November: 41.778
Well, not every loss is due to the people boredom: I can say in the beginning of September, for some strange reasons, admins of eRepublik finally wake up and decided to clean the game of fakes and multiaccounts. In just three days they banned around 850 multiaccounts, and they were all marked as “dead citizens” the month later, where you can see the big step in the graphic.
The population has finally stabilized around 42.000 players, and the “Resource Wars” event did not increased the number. At least it not even decreased.
The “Amazing Journey” event, instead, has pushed up the population a bit, in that week, but the positive trend was not maintained and, in December, the game has lost other 1000 players.
The graphic sure tells you the game is in a slow and fatal decline. A year ago I was pretty sure that eRepublik members would reached the 10 millions milestone before 2021. Instead, today this is one of the last registered players:
https://www.erepublik.com/en/citizen/profile/9610581
I.D. 9.610.581, it means the game still miss almost 390.000 players to ten millions registrations.
Even if eRepublik still counts 200-300 new registrations every day, they are less than the registrations of 2019.
All these data seem to support the hypothesis of the decline of eRepublik. But, on the other hand, someone can say my graphic is incorrect, because I putted the intercept on the axis at 38.000 players, just to emphasize the tip of the iceberg. This is pretty true, so I put also the graphic starting at zero:
After all, 4.000 people of 46.000 is not even 9 %. Looked in this way, the data seem not much worrying (and 850 of them were just toxic multiaccounts). Moreover, the game has demonstrated it can gain people activating some funny events, above all the Amazing Journey: in just a week it has increased the population of 500 players in both 2019 and 2020.
So yes, for us, the question is still open: the decline of eRepublik is an urban legend or an hard truth?
Everyone can tell his opinion, but just the future will say the right answer.
I wish to the game the best of luck, because I still like it. And for my readers, after all these useless cold numbers, it’s time to give something hot, finally:
Comments
The consequence of the fact that no investment has been made on the game.
They're just there to get the package money.
If the game dies, they don't take any more money, let the game die.
Ionian Revolt
https://www.erepublik.com/hr/article/-ionian-revolt-2728692/1/20
Losing 10% in active users is bad, the question is, how did that 10% effect the pack purchases. A good follow up to this is amount of revenue gained month over month over this same timeframe. If revenue stayed the same, or dipped during the Pack Strike from Code only to return due to the events the Admins put on.
Revenue would be based on Pack sales, which I think you can get.
I don't know the effect in the pack purchase, but I agree 10% is bad.
Ionian Revolt
https://www.erepublik.com/hr/article/-ionian-revolt-2728692/1/20
more gothic (dark) than hot imho
I'm just curious if at any point the community ushers in a new platform to continue on it's own unique journey.
Ahaha.
Ionian Revolt
https://www.erepublik.com/hr/article/-ionian-revolt-2728692/1/20
I go by the voting numbers to guesstimate the active players. Based on that I think the population has been relatively constant for years now. It doesn't seem to be crashing below that level.
You are right, but I can just speak for USA about this, I din't ckecked the elections in every country.
Ionian Revolt
https://www.erepublik.com/hr/article/-ionian-revolt-2728692/1/20
There are a variety of ways to measure the decline. Not just the number of players, but the quality of play. There's simply nothing left to do but farm and intra-nationally bicker -- a direct consequence of a stagnant game population full of jaded, burnt-out players. And the population decline is real as well. The idea that the admins did anything to clear out multis when gnilkrap is flaunting his behavior is laughable on its face. The actual population has declined even more than these figures show, because for every real person who comes to his or her senses and quits, there's some co-efficient of new multis created. What that co-efficient is I don't know, but I'd guess it's close to .25.
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Servono nuovi stimoli per andare avanti, d'altronde essere ripetitivo quotidianamente ti fa perdere la voglia.
Ionian Revolt
https://www.erepublik.com/hr/article/-ionian-revolt-2728692/1/20
Great article my friend.
Ionian Revolt
https://www.erepublik.com/hr/article/-ionian-revolt-2728692/1/20
I'll just keep plugging away, probably until the lights go off.
the part of the game I enjoy most is pointing out the obvious, so forgive in advance, it is such low hanging fruit
is the "plugging away", adding the .25 percent mentioned above?
Ionian Revolt
https://www.erepublik.com/hr/article/-ionian-revolt-2728692/1/20
🙁
My heart hurts reading this.
in the end, all things die, just a matter of when. Browser based games are thing of the past. They are more of a niche kind of thing now.
Yes, young people just play MMORPG now.
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Excellent article as always. I wish I could put out as meaningful, engaging articles as you do
I like your articles a lot!
Ionian Revolt
https://www.erepublik.com/hr/article/-ionian-revolt-2728692/1/20
Why the show must go on?
Great article, thank you.
Thanks for publishing. 🙂
Sexy girls! \o/
Always!
O7 keep share this imprtant information
Its so sad that it is looks like we care from this game more than the admins 🙁
48.000 players and i only have 14.800 friends ?????
I will start again ....
Very good article.
I will share 😃
Ahaha, one day I'm sure you will have more friends than total players !
Only a few days until I have ignored more than 14 800 friend requests from you 🙂
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Great article, has been a decrease in numbers of players since 2008/2009. I thought the mass ban of 850 accounts would mean a bit more activity from the admin and maybe it will but sure they work slow and with little invested time and money.
i think it was 2011 when thy start adding new stuff that broke old economy, new war system, work as manager that broke old company system that rely on "real" worker
the end is near.
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
I'm playing another online game which is siad to die for more than ten years now. But a large part of the community is still hooked and while some old ones leave, some new come in. So I'm sure eRep has some more years or more left.
Admins seem to checked out, like in the other mentioned game. Developing at a minimum, while adding incentives to spend money. But that's how the game is now, I don't see it getting even worse. (unless the multi and bot problem takes overhand.) Thus I think the admins and the community can live with a slight decline...
ps: age-check your pics, man 😉
It's just some healthy skinskip between two female friends~
Wait, never mind, you are right. We don't want kids to think it's okay to hug during these corona times.
Ahaha!
They used to manipulate numbers and I bet they still do.
To prevent death the simpliest would be to end all wars and flood the market and make it crash. That would force the developers to actually do something. But I know the admins. They will start some event "make war, not peace" and all the tanks will start buying packs again. It's ridicolous.
The game is basically nothing more then a bunch of TW😒. This game was great. Many good memories.
Your sentiments are much like mine.
yeah, old wars used to be "really" fun and have feeling, like angry,etc but i the end we know it is just a game, so as much as I hate eUSA back in 2010-2011 but in the end it was just a game, engaging one lol
FIST
Second!
Good article.
eRep was THE BEST social startegy 10 years ago. Then, they turned into an arcade in missguided effort to monetize it. This is STILL a social strategy, but society is broken.
Only real chance for eRep to survive and multiply is introducing air as a perfect copy of land, including perception centres. Thus, and only thus can Plato make a fair start for NEW players today.
Management work in all industries.
We are hooked, but full potential of this game can be achieved ONLY by retracting to V1.
My 2c.
Also, to all old players: GG NO RE!