March 2024 Activity In EVE Online

With the end of the first quarter, gaming companies will begin preparing briefings for investors. We won't know the financial numbers for EVE Online until May, but we can perhaps get a sense of direction from the activity in the game.

The number of players logged in leveled off

The first step is to look at the average concurrent number of players as tracked by Jester. The number of players logged in remained fairly constant in March, so much so that the 30-day moving average is closely tracking the 7-day moving average of players logged in. The approximately 22,500 accounts logged in at any one time still exceeds the approximately 19,500 logged in during March 2023. Just from the logged in numbers, the EVE IP is looking at a year-over-year upswing in the Q1 2024 earnings call.

Year-over-year comparison

Over the six categories of explosions in known space in New Eden, the only one which declined was player ship deaths in low sec. The 16.1% decline is probably explained by The Shadow War event which occurred in March 2023.

Overall, player ship losses have exceeded 200,000 ships for 15 of the 17 months since the launch of the Uprising expansion in November 2022. Perhaps more surprising is the current 4 month streak of players killing more than 10 million NPCs in low sec from December 2023 to March 2024. In the records going back to the start of 2010, players had never killed that many NPCs in low sec as many as three months. The last time players killed more than 10 million NPCs in consecutive months was December 2022 and January 2023.

The other key area to check is ratting in null sec. While the major wars in null sec draw eyes to EVE, the carebears in null pay the bills. The 33.7% year-over-year increase in rats destroyed in March wasn't an aberration. Over the course of the first quarter of 2024, players killed 36.4% more NPCs in null sec than they did in the first three months of 2023.

So from a quick look at player activity, I think the health of the game, while not as good as 10 years ago, isn't bad for a game that began development in the 20th century. I also expect to see games from the EVE universe continue to shine on the next Pearl Abyss investment call in May. But what I really want to see is if the next expansion can keep the good news flowing.