Evolve, the asymmetrical monster hunting FPS, is struggling again to maintain a player-base, in spite of going free to play (F2P) two months ago.

On July 6th Evolve had a paltry 155 people playing at its peak which, for a multiplayer-focused game, meant it was pretty much dead as far as players were concerned.

Developer Turtle Rock must have thought the same thing as it made the game free to anyone who would be willing to download it, switching to the F2P model.

On July 7th at 21:20 the player count jumped up to 12 140 – a 7 732% increase as people flocked to the now free title.

While an impressive number, the real longevity of the game would only be apparent a few months later, so we revisited the game, now named Evolve Stage 2, and found some positive news. On August 7th, again at 21:20, 8 873 people were playing the game.

Jump forward another month and the numbers are again looking shaky. Two months after making the change only 2 515 players were in game on September 7th at the same time as the other numbers we’ve taken.

While that number was not the peak for the day or the days around it, unoffical source Steamdb still paints a damning picture for the game as it struggles to attract more than ~4 200 players at any given time in the past week.

Even more worrying is the graph of players for the last few months. As you’ll see below the game got a massive influx of players after going F2P tht has been steadily declining ever since.

The one outlier you’ll notice is the “Overpowered” update which included a weekend where players could earn ten times the normal amount of experience and premium currency.