For Honor DLC Can’t Help The Embattled Game As Its Playerbase Hits Rock Bottom

It's become an all-too-familiar narrative -- Ubisoft launches a new multiplayer-focused title to impressive initial sales, faces backlash and a plummeting playerbase due to online issues, but manages to turn things around via extensive updates and well-tuned DLC. It happened to Tom Clancy's The Division. It happened to Rainbow Six Siege. Now it's happening to For Honor, just without the happy ending.

Ubisoft has made an effort to fix For Honor, improving online connectivity, banning cheaters, toning down microtransactions, punishing rage quitters, and launching a new second season of content, but none of it has mattered.

According to the online gaming trackers at Githyp, For Honor has lost over 95 percent of its playerbase since launch, and it seems like things are only going to get worse.

At its height, For Honor averaged around 50,000 players per hour on Steam, but now that number hovers around 2,000 players per hour. Yesterday (June 5), the daily average was 1,745 players per hour, which is shockingly low for a four-month-old game still being fully supported by a major publisher. You can check out a graph of For Honor's plunging playercount, below.

See that little bump around May 15? That was when For Honor's Shadow and Might DLC pack launched, which knocked the game up to the 4,000 players per hour range, but the bump didn't last.

At this point, it really seems like there's no fixing For Honor. If I had to pinpoint the issue, it's that Ubisoft tried to make something with a fighting game feel, without the proper fighting game polish. FPS players will excuse a bit of server lag and some glitches if the overall experience is fun, but fighting game fans are a more demanding lot. Ubisoft didn't know what they were getting into.

For Honor is currently available for PC, Xbox One, and PS4. You can check out all WWG's latest coverage of the game here, and our back catalog of stories, right here.

[via Githyp]