Renowned YouTuber MrBossFTW aka Ross has shared some interesting graphs and charts depicting the declining multiplayer activity over the last few months in GTA Online.
The activity graph for Rockstar's game servers clearly hints at where the GTA community is headed or if the forthcoming DLC updates will boost the player participation in the online version of GTA 5.
The detailed graph information for player activity over the past one year is available via steam database portal wherein the stats are recorded on a daily basis, using the SteamSpy app.
As Ross points out, the player activity stats on the graph mimic a roller-coaster drop wherein the Rockstar game servers witnessed a fall in incoming traffic after the first few days, following the launch of GTA 5 re-mastered edition on 14 April in 2015.
It is estimated that around 300,000 players were logged into GTA Online when the game was launched for PC just a year ago, followed by a spike on the first weekend (360,000 visitors) after the game's launch. However, the game servers gradually saw a decline in the number of online visitors over the subsequent weeks and months.
The letters are shown at the bottom of the graph (see above) indicate the various Newswire updates or DLC releases that came out in subsequent instalments wherein you can see a traffic spike after every such update.
The summer period from April to July received a mini-boost in terms of player traffic whenever an update was released. But, you can clearly see a major fall in numbers towards the end of July-August when the schools reopen and children have less time to play video games. The falling trend is clearly noticeable during end of August to end of September.
The downward trend was ceased once the first Low-Riders update came out in GTA Online in November 2015, followed by the December spike in 2015 which was triggered for a number of reasons including school holidays and the launch of new updates such as the Christmas DLC.
The last few months have once again seen a drastic dip reaching an all-time low in the player traffic in GTA Online, due to the lack of DLC releases in recent times.
Despite the community's general notion that GTA 5 is dead, the game has been selling successfully every week in the top-ten list in the US and the UK.
Ross concludes that Rockstar will need to recreate the success of Executives and Other Criminals DLC in order bring back its loyal fans to GTA Online or keep them hooked to the game for extended periods of time.
The success of the upcoming DLCs becomes critical in the context that the game is older than three years while there has been a serious lack of updates in the last few months. With the summer holidays (for the US) lurking just around the corner, it is imperative that Rockstar puts in the extra effort to lure its loyal fans back into the game.
