In touring around the various outpourings from the community here, on twitter, on other pages and on Youtube, one thing that has struck me is the belief that there was no reason to shut down our game because of the disappointing results of the sequel. I find that puzzling, as I've been saying for the last year that the end was nigh. I offer my data, so you can judge for yourself.

My data is based on PVP rankings and percentiles. I've kept pretty good data on my PVP finishes over the years, with a few exceptions. I have an estimate of my rating in the Deadpool tournament, based largely on memory. I rated in the 0.0% (and they didn't go to two decimals until the 6th tournament), so that's a bit squinky (could be 942K, could be 4.71 Million). I remember doing some math at the time with some folks and coming up with the population estimate I have given. There is margin of error on all of the estimates, with larger populations producing larger margins and the first five tournaments having larger margins due to the single decimal rounding.

PVP # Hero My Rating My Rank Est. Pop 1 Deadpool 0.02% 471 1,962,500 2 Cable 0.70% 8977 1,282,429 3 Psylocke 0.10% 1444 1,444,000 4 Punisher 5 X-23 0.60% 7548 1,258,000 6 Fantomex 0.29% 3404 1,173,793 7 Shatterstar 0.37% 4207 1,137,027 8 Red Hulk 0.58% 7558 1,303,103 9 Angel 0.42% 5645 1,344,048 10 Bishop 11 Spiral 1.84% 20856 1,133,478 12 Domino 0.23% 2360 1,026,087 13 Agent Venom 0.45% 5421 1,204,667 14 Hogun 0.60% 5456 909,333 15 Rocket Raccoon 0.29% 2677 923,103 16 Drax 0.25% 1899 759,600 17 Karnak 0.10% 507 507,000 18 Nova 0.08% 368 460,000 19 Angela 0.27% 1168 432,593 20 Victor Mancha 0.18% 724 402,222 21 Deathlok 1.13% 4995 442,035 22 Spider Noir 0.77% 2914 378,442 23 Spider-Girl 1.16% 4455 384,052 24 A-Bomb 1.59% 4886 307,296 25 Misty K 0.39% 1078 276,410 26 Colleen Wing 0.27% 687 254,444 27 Kraven 0.04% 77 197,436 28 Hellcat 2.11% 6239 295,687 29 Cloak & Dagger 0.35% 1087 310,571 30 Beetle 0.52% 1585 304,808 31 Songbird 1.70% 4890 287,647 32 Phylla Vell 0.95% 2818 296,632

So, if we take my Deadpool estimate as the gospel, and compare year over year we get the following results:

PVP Year First Hero Last Hero Start Pop End Pop Decline 1 Deadpool Spiral 1,962,500 1,133,478 42% 2 Spiral Karnak 1,133,478 507,000 55% 3 Karnak A-Bomb 507,000 307,296 39% 4 A-Bomb Phyla-Vell 307,296 296,632 3%

The last number there might be a bit deceptive. A-Bomb to Kraven saw a 35% drop. The game rebuilt a good chunk of that loss in the Hellcat tournament and the subsequent Cloak and Dagger tournament, but the decline was back.

The short of this is that from the first tournament to the last tournament the game had shed nearly 85% of the PVP players.

I am looking for a way to find historical data on Daily, Weekly and Monthly Average Users without paying an arm and a leg for it, but I can tell you this... in the early months of the game, Avengers Alliance was a top FB game with 5-10 Million daily average users. I think it peaked over 10M in the summer of 2012. Today, it is down in the 100K DAU category. That isn't really going to cut funding a large development team and servers to produce the game.

The larger trend is the Facebook DAU are up massively (like to something like a billion people), while Facebook game DAUs are down across the board. You only need look at the top games to know that gaming on FB is way down... there are only three games currently pulling 10 million DAU... Candy Crush, Clash of Clans and Subway Surfer (really?!?!?). 8 Ball Pool and Farm Heroes Saga pull 5 Million DAU. And if you look at that list and say, "Gee, nothing looks quite like our game," you're right. While we love playing it on FB, it seems that most people who would like playing this game don't want to play games on FB. Depressing, but true.

I don't like that Disney Interactive is pulling the plug anymore than the angriest commenter on Twitter and YouTube. But I get it. There's not enough base, and if the current group of players isn't putting enough money into the game, then it is extremely unlikely they ever will. I don't like it, but I am forced to accept it and that has caused me to look to explain it.