EVE Online Player Count: Is Anyone Still Playing the Space-Based MMORPG in 2023?

Welcome, space traveler.

Prepare for a bumpy space ride as we’ll focus on a 20-year-old MMORPG that managed to stay relevant even now, after all these years. Do space travel, combat, politics, and games of power catch your fancy?

If so, take a look at our collection of EVE Online player count stats and other crucial and fascinating info to check if this is the game for you.

Developer: CCP Games

Year of release: 2003

Platforms: Windows, Mac

Genre: Space-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG)

Outlandish Facts About EVE Online (Editor’s Choice):

• The game gained a free tier in August 2016.
• It has a total of over 9 million players, with around 170,000 active each month on average.

• Every time a big video game gets released, the EVE Online server population decreases by 2,000 to 5,000.

• As of August 2021, the game’s subscriptions bring up to $1.2 million in revenue every month.
• The biggest battle in EVE Online history lasted 21 hours.
• A group of players once managed to steal ships and items worth 30 billion ISK (in-game currency).
• This MMO still has at least 110,000 paid subscribers per month.

EVE Online Info

If you’ve never heard of EVE, you’re in the right place. In this section, we’ll cover all the basics—how come that it’s still popular, its history and record-breaking moments.

1. EVE Online became free-to-play in 2016.

(Source: Game Developer)

When did EVE Online get popular? Well, even though it became free-to-play in 2016, it wasn’t then—that moment only contributed to its success. An exact date, however, is basically impossible to pinpoint as its player count has been on a rise for years.

Thus, we can only tell you about its major moments that added to its ever growing popularity. Besides it being free-to-play (for the most part; paying up adds some perks, but nothing too drastic) as one of the biggest things that held the game together in more recent years, we can give its 2011 as an example. The year was one of the most successful for the game, adding hundreds of thousands of players to its count and boosting its popularity.

2. The game became popular due to its high complexity and freedom.

(Source: Den of Geek)

Next up, a much easier question—why did EVE Online get popular? The wonderful thing about it is that you can do so many things during a game. Politics, feud, ambushes, all commonly break out. It has its own economy, governments, even religions. That makes it highly reminiscent of virtual worlds such as Second Life. Some even claim it’s more complex than the world’s biggest MMO—World of Warcraft!

3. One of the game’s biggest heists ended up in 30 billion ISK being stolen.

(Source: PC Gamer)

If we told you that 30 billion ISK was stolen, you’d probably laugh it off. However, that’s no laughing matter—at the time of this orchestrated assault in 2005, that was $16,500 worth of items. Even crazier is how the EVE Online player base behind the attack planned it for 10 months!

The Guiding Hand Social Club, a group of assassins, attempted to kill Mirial, CEO of the Ubiqua Seraph corporation. They managed to do it thanks to numerous double agents. One of them even became Mirial’s right-hand man, making the coup possible. Besides stealing so much money, they also destroyed numerous ships in the process.

4. The biggest, longest battle in EVE Online’s history lasted 21 hours.

(Source: PC Gamer)

The EVE Online popularity is so high, in part thanks to its outrageous battles.

Though, none come close to the battle for a star system called B-R5RB. This 21-hour-long battle was waged by 7,500 players from just two coalitions. Over its course, 11 trillion ISK in ships were destroyed, including 75 Titans—the game’s most powerful vessels.

EVE Online Players

Games often get shut down due to low popularity and player count. CCP Games are pretty aware of that since their own games have met such faith. With EVE, however, things are quite different. 

5. EVE Online has at least 110,000 subscribed players every month.

(Source: The Nosy Gamer)

In August 2021, EVE Online devs gave up some details about the game’s economy and future. They didn’t disclose its revenue or how many people still play EVE Online, however.

This is where the internet steps in. This time, in the face of Redditor Angry Mustache. They decided to do the number-crunching all by themselves, coming up with crucial new info along the way. By looking at the revenue and player numbers, their estimate claims that the subscribed EVE Online player count is around 110,000. Or at least, that’s how many Omega accounts (paid accounts getting additional in-game bonuses) there are.

6. Overall, there are 170,000 EVE Online monthly players.

(Source: MMO Populations)

When considering both Alpha and Omega accounts, things become even more impressive. According to MMO Populations, EVE Online’s usually hangs around the 170,000-player mark. That puts it at 19th place out of all 134 MMO games. It’s thought to be in a good state as the 2022 EVE Online player count even saw a slight increase.

7. The game’s total player count exceeds 9 million.

(Source: MMO Populations)

EVE Online has been live for almost 20 years now. As such, its total number of players is expected to be pretty wild. Rest assured, it is. At the time of writing, MMO Populations placed it at 9,023,117!

8. The EVE Online player count decreases by 2,000 to 5,000 people every time a big title gets released.

(Source: The Nosy Gamer)

Indubitably, the gaming environment is going to be a big influence to the games’ popularity. That’s just one of the factors, though. The in-game conflicts and the end of the global lockdown also affect the EVE Online player count, even in 2022. It’s also worth noting that when Skyrim hit the shelves, EVE’s player count fell by 2,000.

Moreover, the game lacks content updates, which, honestly, can be a big enough reason by itself for the fall of EVE Online population.

EVE Online News

Even old games have news. Actually, they’re particularly important here since they can be the difference between life and death. Looking at EVE, though, it seems that its creators are making all the right moves.

9. Every month, CCP Games gets at least $1.2 million in revenue from subscriptions.

(Source: Massively Overpowered)

Remember Reddit user Angry Mustache? Thanks to him, we can now discuss these findings. They figured it out by looking at the number of aforementioned paid monthly subscribers, thus concluding that the devs get at least $1.2 million per month this way. The game definitely doesn’t seem dead, does it?

10. The EVE Online revenue decreased by only 3% in Q4 2021.

(Source: Massively Overpowered)

While nobody knows how much money it’s exactly making, EVE Online is doing much better than it might seem. Going forward into 2022, its revenue seems to be solid. The devs’ attempt to follow the brand-new trends is paying off big time so far.

11. BjornBee, EVE_NT_TV, and Mind1 are some of the top EVE Online streamers.

(Source: TwitchMetrics)

They come right after CCP—the developers’ official Twitch channel, which is both the most popular and most viewed EVE Online channel. We wouldn’t even be surprised if it was the driving force behind the EVE Online player count persistence. Not only does it have an average of 794 viewers, it also has 79,542 viewer hours.

Admittedly, it is not the easiest game to stream, but most modern streaming software can handle it.

All other channels are trailing pretty far. Then comes BjornBee—averaging 473 viewers and having 19,274 viewer hours. It’s followed by EVE_NT_TV, with an average number of 271 viewers. However, another channel has more viewer hours than BjornBee—Mind1 currently sits at a decent 26,374 hours.

12. The Alliance Tournament XVII will be the first one to feature player kills as non-fungible tokens.

(Source: Massively Overpowered)

You read that right. The devs have decided to hop on the NFT bandwagon. They’re likely doing this in order to stabilize the 2022 EVE Online player count and make the game fresher.

This decision has already caught the attention of the gaming community. With so many gamers into collecting various achievements and trophies, how couldn’t it? During the tournament, each death will be minted into an NFT, and the person making the kill will be the NFT’s owner.

CCP Games deserves all the praise here, as they’ve even partnered up with Tezos blockchain. It’s apparent they took this project seriously, with the awareness of the environmental impact only further proof of that.

Wrap Up

We’re slowly making the return to Earth. We hope you found your short trip to space enjoyable and informative.

EVE Online and its player base definitely still have the fight in them. There are streams and some brand-new strategies to try and keep it all flashy. If you were wondering whether you should start—do give it a shot. It’s free, after all.