A Look At EVE Online Activity In January 2025

While we won't know the results until next week, EVE Online looks like the game did quite well in 2024. But in the video game business, especially in MMORPG's, one cannot rest on one's laurels. So while some games struggle to figure out how they did in 2023, observers of EVE are already looking at the initial data for January 2025. So, what's the situation in New Eden?

Jester's graph from 1 Feb 2024 to 31 Jan 2025

Just looking at concurrency the Revenant expansion is not performing well. The 7-day moving average of concurrently logged in accounts actually dipped below 22,000, or below that logging in right before the Havoc expansion in November 2023. If concurrency falls below 21,000 before the hype for the summer expansion hits, 2025 might prove a down year for EVE Online, if not for CCP Games in general.

Dotlan Data - Month over Month comparison

High sec, especially in Uitra, continues to do high sec things where player ship losses are concerned. I did raise my eyebrows as January saw an 8% increase in the number of NPCs dying at the hands of players in the security band. Honestly, in the wake of the conclusion of the Winter Nexus event, I expected the number of NPCs killed to go down.

Low security space dropped a little bit in both player and AI explosions. NPC losses don't necessarily signify much by themselves. The drop in player ship losses amounted to 200 less per day, not too worrying an amount as long as players continue to lose over 200,000 ships per month in low sec.

We do see the effects of the Great Reset in null security space with an 11.8% increase in player ships exploding. The continued decline of rats dying is a troubling trend if it continues, but a 1.3% decline month-over-month decline doesn't really shout out an alarm.

Dotlan Data - Year over Year comparison

When looking at year-over-year data, PvE activity in the form of NPCs exploding fell across all security bands. The 14.9% decline in high security space is not offset by increases in other areas. And the number of player ships exploding outside high sec doesn't suggest rising activity either. The drop of 30,000 ships exploding in low sec in January 2024 was only partially offset by the increase of 19,000 in null security space. Perhaps a mass migration occurred into either wormholds or Pochven, but I'm skeptical.

For 2025 I'm going to switch from looking at long-term low sec trends to null sec as the past two expansions seemed to concentrate on that security band. January 2025 continued a streak of 11 months in a row, and 15 out of 16 months of having more than 250,000 player-owned ships explode in null sec. The only exception is February 2024, and the loss rate was such that the month would have exceeded 250,000 if the month contained 30 days. The streak started one month before the launch of Havoc in November 2023.

While player ship losses have trended upwards since the start of the Second Expansion Era in November 2022, NPC deaths have declined since peaking at 218.3 million in June 2024. Null sec did see seven consecutive months of players killing over 200,000 rats from April 2024 to October 2024 but the numbers have remained between 190,000 and 200,000 for the past three months. Whether the developers are happy with that number is hard to determine, but does it indicate dissatisfaction with the most recent expansion Revenant?

As I mentioned at the top of the post, we won't know the financial impact of the latest expansion until next week's investor call. But unlike some game companies that make internet spaceships who have trouble submitting financial accounts from 2023, we here following EVE are ready to begin moving into 2025.