Cities: Skylines 2 Active Player Count Reduces By 50% Compared To First Game

The player count reflects the current state of the respective games.

By Shahmeer Sarfaraz February 1, 2024

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Cities: Skylines 2 active player count has nearly reduced by 50% compared to the first title in the series.
As seen on SteamDB, the original entry appears to have a higher number of active players on average.
Performance issues and lack of features have led the sequel into murky waters; the issues are being handled.

The launch of Cities: Skylines 2 has been shaky, to say the least. As a result, the active player count of the city-builder has taken a dip. But no one expected to see a decline of nearly 50% compared to the first title. As first noticed by the Redditor u/Interesting_Habit966 on the r/Games subreddit, the original game in the series is roughly raking in double the players on Steam in contrast to the sequel, surprising many in the community.

Cities: Skylines 2 has nearly 50% less players than the first game, as seen in the SteamDB image. — Cities: Skylines 2 has nearly 50% fewer players than the first game, as seen in the SteamDB image.

Comparing the concurrent player count of both titles on SteamDB reveals that Cities: Skylines 2 only has 5,937 players currently playing, which is quite a low amount compared to the 9,428 users currently managing a city in the first entry. The sequel has been on a downward spiral in terms of player count ever since it came out, with many players flooding back into the first game.

It is also worth mentioning that the original release features a huge variety of mods, DLCs, and a plethora of other enticing content that has also stopped many players from playing Cities: Skylines 2 a lot. The other portion of the fans are waiting on the devs to deal with the myriad of problems currently plaguing the CS2 with each eventful update. The team has released a roadmap for 2024 as it works on tackling each request.

Despite some concerns at hand, the sequel is rife with a lot of fun city-building to be had.

On the contrary, performance issues and incomplete features have played a role in downsizing the game’s active player count by 50%. Therefore, many fans have been upset regarding the state of Cities: Skylines 2, leading to high levels of toxicity. While addressing the chaos, the company CEO has warned to pull back engagement if it continues.

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Cities: Skylines 2 was released on October 24, 2023 for PC. The title is expected to appear on console ecosystems in Q2 2024, but no release date has yet been announced. eXputer’s Asad Ahmed recently reviewed the sequel thoroughly with a fair 3.5/5 score and dubbed it to be an “unfinished mess” of a title. The optimization needs a lot of work, and many features still remain to be added.

For first-time players looking forward to running a city smoothly, I suggest glancing through our How To Manage Taxes guide to ensure a balanced stream of cash flow.

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