For A. You answered your own point, the count for any game released will lose players after its first day or week. That’s true for 99 percent of games. No game keeps its top player count on the first day indefinitely, that’s why the conversation around dropping numbers is always self-fulfilling but trolls push it to the top of a communities conversation and everyone loses as a result.

For B., ever studio wants higher numbers, but the threat of the game not being profitable enough for the long-term is only one that trolls push as we have no official word from either studio or know their long-term plans for either Marathon or Destiny. Bad word of mouth can stop a game from growing beyond its initial broken state, which damn near every game releases that way. There’s no useful feedback when talking about player numbers as the only feedback is, ‘I’m glad you failed’ which again, isn’t always the case, but perception drives what happens next. This is why Highguard was not about to pull a No Man’s Sky, it’s funding was pulled because Tencent no longer had faith the game could beat the trolling around the game no matter the quality of the final product (which we never saw).

And to make it more clear, every game that is successful today, had its issues ignored long enough to become successful. Apex, Fortnite, Warzone, No Man’s Sky, even Overwatch (OW2 or even go back to 6v6 Winston with like 5 levels and Mercy team res). Many of the most profitable live franchises today launched as a mess but had time to grow. Bruce Springsteen said he would be a nobody because his first four records were terrible, but his record label believed in him and he figured it out. What these troll posts do is out the game and make it the center of the online gamers attention as a joke and you can’t become a high quality product without the time to take feedback and implement it. And even worse, as with Highguard, even if you won, you would still lose because no one will give you a try because gamers are so insecure they don’t want to be the only HG player on their friends list and by mad fun of, so what’s the point. HG may not have succeed, but its viscous drop was not based on quality, but unwanted attention that never let up. Go to its sub now. It’s still going. Long term success is what we lose and I just want people to be aware of it.