An amusing thing happened to CCP Games in August. The overlords in Anyang decided to tell investors that the games operating using the EVE intellectual property had figured out the whole seasonal business issue and in the future CCP Games would pull in at least ₩20 billion in sales quarterly. Right in the middle of EVE Online's weakest financial quarter historically due to the annual summer slump. Did players get the message they were supposed to keep playing so CCP could meet their financial target? Let's find out.
Looking at Jester's average concurrent user chart, the signs look hopeful. After a big decline in the month following the launch of the Equinox expansion, the numbers appear to have levelled off at approximately 21,000 accounts logged into EVE's Tranquility shard at any one time. While the annual decline occurring in July instead of August wasn't a good sign for CCP Games' corporate wallet, at least those remaining for the most part stuck around to play. And year-over-year the ACU is still around 10% higher than August 2023.
The kill numbers from Dotlan seem to back up Jester's chart. Ignoring the high sec ship kills due to whatever is happening in the career agent systems of Uitra and Malukker, player activity in the form of explosions declined slightly across all other categories from July to August. Perhaps the most significant numbers is players killing each other in low sec is down by perhaps 3% and ratting activity, if not income, only declined 2% in null sec.
But to see if expansions are successfully ratcheting up player counts, looking up year-over-year data is valuable. The developers are probably feeling good about the increased activity in null security space considering the Equinox expansion focused heavily on null sec. NPC kills were up 33.9% compared to August 2024, helping to fund the 23.1% increase in player-owned ships exploding in the security band last month.
A positive from my point of view is the number of player ship losses occurring in low security space. While below 200,000 for the second month in a row, August's 189,700 player-owned ship explosions still represented a 6.2% increase from August 2023. The figure, given the switch in emphasis to null sec, still represents the most player ships lost over the past 5 years.
After looking at the activity, I'm fairly confident EVE will survive the rest of the year. But what about our overlords in Anyang? How will they take the news so far? Probably not well. My quick calculations show the EVE IP will probably fall ₩1 billion to ₩1.5 billion short of quarterly revenue unless the explosions increase in September. So get out there and blow stuff up.
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