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The pandemic is far away, but not its possible effects. And it is something that we could clearly see in a study that has managed to highlight the rise of cooperative multiplayer proposals. The fact is that in 2024 it has been possible to see that this type of game mode has an apparent greater impact on players, who seem more receptive to the cooperative experience. Games like Palworld or Helldivers 2 are good examples of this, and The First Descendant seems to confirm the taste for this type of games.
The study would come from VG Insights, which would have exposed in its report that this trend has been marked in recent years with a notable increase in the proposals that cover this multiplayer game mode. The rise of cooperative multiplayer proposals exposes an average increase of 5.7% per year between 2020 and 2024.
The rise of cooperative multiplayer proposals in 2024, where almost half of the games released have some cooperative function
It is not an exaggeration, since according to the study, In 2024, 46% of the games launched address multiplayer with this option And we're only halfway through the year. It's still early to assess the absolute growth of cooperative multiplayer proposals, but you can see how since 2020, where it almost doubled that of the previous year, growth has been a constant. According to the report, 1,000 games were launched a total of 799 co-op games on Steam in 2023, surpassing the figure for 2022, which was 701 games, which in turn surpassed 2021, with 650 games and did the same with 2020, where 647 games were released.
In addition, many of the releases that have had a great impact on the community, reaching impressive participation figures, have been cooperative. This is the case of the success that Palworld had, which seemed unstoppable as an Early Access and now seems to have recovered with its latest update. The First Descendant was released yesterday and has already begun to have an overwhelming participation, although in this case we are talking about a free game. All of this is showing a tendency to see cooperative multiplayer proposals increasingly better, it is even estimated that it is obtaining greater acceptance than the rest of multiplayer proposals on Steam, not to mention games without these options.
Although this study acknowledges that much of the impact of participation comes from two specific titles, it extrapolates this study on the rise of cooperative multiplayer proposals to the most humble games. It indicates that, looking at the lower end of this statistic, cooperative games sell twice as much as those that are not, and achieve better records throughout their existence, with an average of 300,000 copies sold. With this, they seem to indicate that the studios can see a good vein in this type of games, knowing that if they have a certain impact they can end up having good income and have a favorable review that boosts the studio within the industry.
If we extrapolate this analysis to our experience with consoles, more specifically in the case of Xbox, we have the best example of this rise in cooperative multiplayer proposals with some proposals. Games like Sea of Thieves or Groundedare those games that have been able to maintain their player base better than other proposals. It is true that the arrival of new players can boost these experiences even more, as long as they manage to stay active via updates. And the fact is that not everything has been successful, pointing out proposals such as Aliens Fireteam, Back 4 Blood or Warhammer 40K: Darktidewhich have failed to retain players despite being released on Game Pass at launch. This also seemed to indicate that this formula did not seem to be having much success.
The issue now is that, seeing this trend and the fact that cooperative games tend to be more successful, classic multiplayer games might be forced to change their formula a bit to obtain better results. Whether we like it or not, PvP games seem to be suffering a slight crisis of participation where some of the most recognizable licenses have not managed to capture and retain players. What do you think of this analysis that shows an upward trend in cooperative proposals? Are you more of a PvP or PvE person?