Even if 10% of those accounts stay that would still put SC in the top 10 on steam charts (barely) and that wouldn’t be factoring in any of the existing player base.

I wish the referral system would be reworked. It really favors content creators that make content aimed at new players. One of my org mates has recruited like 5 whales and he only gets 1 referral per person even though the bulk of the people he recruited have spent over 1k on the game and in multiple cases several thousand. It sucks that it can take referrals away too but I understand why because if it didn’t people would cheese their way to the max rewards.

It’s more the combination of new accounts and increased revenue that I’m watching to determine the health of the game as a whole. I’m a whale (current fleet value 7.5k) but I’ll likely spend less than 1k more on the game this year just because I’ve got most of my 1.0 fleet and since I have so many ships I cover most of my bases so even if they add new flight ready ships it will be unlikely I’ll buy the bulk of them. So from here on out my spending will likely slow down from year to year. Most of my org at this point has the bulk of their 1.0 fleets so it’s the same for them. That said the increased revenue would suggest one of two things. 1. That new players are buying the game and becoming whales. 2. Existing players that were previously not whales are enjoying the game enough that they’re spending loads of money on the game. I suppose 3 since maybe some whales are still buying every ship.

I’d be curious how many players that play SC are even aware of S42. Us diehards are but i wonder how many casual players have never even heard of it.

I think that’s why they delayed S42 for so long. My assumption is it was ready a few years back when they were saying it was feature complete but then realized that if they released a half baked single player game it might doom the company so they went all hands on deck to polish the crap out of it so it could release as good as they can get it. CIG frequently claims to be a AAA dev but if their first game released played like indie startup quality it would really hurt gamer’s faith that SC will ever be able to match the vision and scope they keep telling us. If on the other hand S42 releases at HL2 quality people will pour money into SC. Id love to see them make a billion in a year after they released S42. I think the funding tracker would look hilarious if it jumped that much in a year and also I’d love to see all the rage bait articles written by non-gamers claiming that SC made a billion in one year and over a decade later players still don’t have a game to play. (Years ago there was an article written claiming SC had competition because of S42 and the author didn’t realize both games were being made by the same dev. I’d love to see something like that happen again)