Is New World Losing Its Player Count in 2023?

Amazon is not just the world’s biggest marketplace anymore. In this behemoth of an organization’s portfolio, you can find cloud computing, streaming services, publishing companies… and as of recently, video game development department.

Today, we’ll talk about New World—the first Amazon game (for PC). Still, that’s not why it could go down in history.

It was delayed numerous times, had a huge launch day but was still majorly disappointing. The number of players it lost in its first month alone could easily put it on various biggest losers’ lists.

Join us as we set out to discover whether the New World player count is any better a few months later, or if the game is about to completely die down.

Developer: Amazon Games Orange County

Year of release: 2021

Platforms: Windows

Genre: Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG)

Captivating Facts About the Game (Editor’s Choice):

• New World was released on Steam on September 28, 2021.
• It was initially supposed to be free-to-play.
• There are 1,522,728 daily and a total of 16 million New World players.
• New World has faced many complaints because of the decreasing number of players.
• In just a single month, New World lost over 500,000 users.
• New World had over 700,000 concurrent players on the day of its launch.

New World Facts

To be clear, New World is that bad of a game. It doesn’t even have a negative rating on Steam (although you can certainly find many mixed reviews).

The game has amazing graphics and a fun grinding system. What it also has, though, is many problems. Let’s see what they are. 

1. The New World initial release date was May 2020.

(Source: Forbes) 

It became rather notorious for its release delays. Initially set for a May 2020 release, Amazon postponed it to August 25, 2020, which was later moved all the way to the spring of 2021.

The devs then changed it yet again, this time to August 31, 2021… and, no, that didn’t end up to be the release date either.

2. The Amazon MMO New World finally got released on September 28, 2021.

(Source: Forbes) 

Yes, you’ve got it right—the game was postponed at least four times, only to be released a year and half later than the initial date. And after all these delays, you’d probably think it would at least be polished. That, unfortunately, couldn’t be further from the truth.

The game was so buggy and its updates so underwhelming that it started losing players very early on. Not to mention that even the New World endgame was lacking.

3. New World was initially planned to be a free-to-play game.

(Source: Business Insider) 

Is New World free to play? Well, no, but if it’s any consolation, it was initially planned to be.

Amazon gave this idea up somewhere along the way, though it gifted the game to a number of players anyway. Because of all the delays, people that signed up years before the game’s launch got it for free.

At least New World has no subscription fee, unlike most of the other MMO games. Still, paying $40 for a buggy game with a lack of players? We’ve heard of better deals.

Because of all this, people suggested making the game free-to-play at least until the biggest New World problems get fixed. Perhaps this could help with the crumblesome player count…

4. While waiting for Amazon to fix the game, people played New World in crazy ways.

(Source: TheGamer) 

When you imagine an action-oriented game, there’s a good bet that combat is the first thing that comes to mind. Well, that’s yet another proof that other MMORPG populations are nothing like New World’s.

For it, players resorted to everything but combat—that’s a consequence of most of them being part of the same faction. Expectedly, everybody wants to be on the winning side. Some people left because of that, but others came up with fascinating new ideas. They held fishing tournaments or just started building things together.

The next time somebody tells you video games incite violence, show them this.

5. The most recent New World game event, Winter Convergence, was so successful that it was extended. 

(Source: TheGamer) 

Again, not everything is so bad about the game. This event gave players more items to look out for as well as several new quests.

It helped increase this MMO’s population, so here’s hoping that we see more of these in the future.

6. The best New World alternative is… RuneScape?

(Source: TheGamer) 

In case you’re looking for games like New World that, well… aren’t New World, perhaps you could try RuneScape.

Although it’s a whole 20 years older, it has a similar goal. Also, both games are great for grinding and maxing everything out. So if you’re still wondering whether to play New Word, now you have an alternative—if you can bear with severely outdated graphics, that is.

New World Player Count

You probably got it by now—its numbers are in a bad state.

But did you wonder why this happened or exactly how many people play the game now, or how many there used to be, or… We’ll cover all questions like these in the stats below. 

7. At the time of writing, the total New World player base is 16.3 million.

(Source: MMO Populations) 

It seems like New World is still living off of its glory days. Its launch is actually the reason why the New World population is actually quite big—a total number somewhere around 16 million. Though, this also includes players that tested the game out just once, which is why, in reality, the player numbers are definitely not in such a good state.

8. The New World player count is so low that it led to numerous complaints from the community.

(Source: TheGamer)

The game devs did end up listening to the audience’s cries. With such low numbers, they had no choice but to merge some of the game’s servers.

By doing this, Amazon decreases the biggest possible number of players that can play the game… of course, this currently doesn’t matter because its servers were never even full to begin with.

9. The peak daily player count was estimated at 1,522,728 people.

(Source: MMO Populations) 

Again, while this, too, sounds like quite a number, it really isn’t. Moreover, the predictions are that it will get even lower in the near future. 

Though, who knows what will really happen—if New World fans could have come up with fishing, perhaps they would get even more creative ideas in the meantime.

10. Because of the low player count, players suggested merging the game’s servers even further.

(Source: TheGamer) 

In the end, this is a team-based game above all. In order to fully experience it, you need to have enough people on your squad.

Right now, the New World population is so small that players can’t fight each other. At least they’ve come up with some pretty creative workarounds.

11. The game had over 700,000 concurrent players on the day of its launch.

(Source: Steam Charts) 

New World gaming used to seem like it’ll be a big thing in the future. On launch day, over 700,000 people played the game at the same time.

A few days later, this number went even higher and peaked at 913,027 concurrent players.

Unfortunately, the New World Steam Charts page looks much worse now. It’s only averaging 40,000 concurrent players at most on the popular digital game distribution platform.

12. 500,000 players left within a month of the game’s release.

(Source: PCGamesN) 

How many people play New World? Well, it’s rather impossible to give an exact number now as its player count falls every single day since the first month.

It was undoubtedly most painful as part of the New World population left pretty abruptly. At least those that enjoy the game’s upsides still stick around…

Wrap Up

New World’s state right now is pretty hard to evaluate. The game’s not dead… yet. Though, given how even some of its most recent updates were broken, the New World player count is likely to drop even lower.

It’s definitely on its death row but considering how there are still a number of devoted games figuring out creative ways to play, perhaps it will hold off long enough until better updates come. Nothing else but to wait and see if that happens.