Mere speculation.
All we do know is that total revenue from this game is close to $1B based on numbers released by SGG itself.
We can guess player numbers from tournament rankings (~1.4M), but that’s certainly not all players, but I believe it’s been going down very slowly for a bit — I seem to recall it being about 1.7M a year ago. But, again, this is largely speculation/extrapolation.
Tournaments require you to join, my guess is mythic titans would be a better indicator of the number of active accounts.
It is certainly true, though, that in my current locale reviews are very bad:
1131111521111141521133413311141351124
which should be 76 out of 37 votes so basically 2*.
What’s worse is that a lot of reviewers are downgrading their initial vote.
Which is totally expected once they crash the season 1 rookie wall.
I’d prefer not to discuss it in this forum, primarily due to some folks who clearly aren’t in a place to look at the issue for what it is. Not looking to argue with well-defended people. I wouldn’t do it with clients, I’m certainly not going to with strangers on the internet.
If you’re interested in the brain chemistry and behaviors involved, I’d be happy to chat via Discord, Line, Reddit, etc.
Short version, be kind to yourself. You’re dealing with well documented stuff, and your brain is operating normally. If you want, you could google intermittent reinforcement as a starting point. You quite literally described it in your post.
Good luck.
Right now double everyone answers and that’s the real estimate per year lol.
Yeah, and tournaments aren’t available until level 6 or 10 or something. Don’t recall anymore.
Mystic titans require being in an alliance at the least, which not all are.
There’s no precise way to measure as a player. But most indicators point to a very slow decrease.
This was the very first mobile game I ever spent money on. So I initially was unprepared for the psychological design and triggers within a gacha game system.
And this was the first time, playing a game, I had to learn and be mindful of the impact on mental health that gacha games can have. It’s a grey thin line, where you have to be mindful of the same problems that mirror gambling addiction.
@Igmuhota is correct that this can spin into a very deep and lengthy thread, and you should google “gacha” gaming on your own (there are some forum threads here if you search.)
I think @Igmuhota gave the best tip by pointing to reinforcement in general and intermittent reinforcement in particular.
A good read on the argument would be extremely healthy also to those who think that a grown adult should [always] be able to be in control.
Truth is gacha with lootboxes have their foundation in variable ratio schedule reinforcement, literally what induces the most resistance to extinction.
A very fancy way to say that lootboxes exploit the inherent dynamic in mammals’ brains that makes it hardest to stop.
Enjonkies
I dropped out of the top 10% in the last mythic Titan when I got below around 150,000 in rank.
That makes me think there’s about 1.5 million people playing actively
That is some serious beans for a match 3 game. Before anyone takes exception to that, absent the card/base leveling shenanigans, what are you doing? Yep, playing a match 3 Candy Crush imitation. Lol, no wonder these types of games increase exponentially by the week in the PlayStore. Minimal game mechanics for maximum returns.
Sort of makes me wish I could code tbh.
Thank you all for your input, I found the articles online concerning intermittent reinforcement very interesting indeed. I have struggled with my mental health outside of the game and I always wonder if the game works as a healthy escape or if it is actually doing more harm than good. What I do know is that I need to tone down my spending habits! I urge you all to look through your Google play spending history, it’s sobering to say the least.
I can’t point to a link but just create a newbie account and you will discover there are only about 1.5 million ranked above you. Considering the number of people here with duplicate accounts, I would put the number of actual live single owner accounts in the few hundreds of thousands.
I wish you well in life, but if you have these doubts over the game now, it’s not going to improve going forward. Perhaps try a hiatus from Empires via a simple uninstal? If you find you can manage a day, 2 days…consider a more permanent solution. Burning your roster is a popular choice or, other than that, a ticket to the devs asking them to delete your account.
Whatever you choose to do, staying in game or leaving, please take care of yourself. 
Active users with level more than 10 because “call a friend, get gems and VIP then he will level 10” 
Usually then I try to find any alliance just by taping text in search I see “cemetery” of accounts
Sometimes I find it hard to reconcile with #2500 locally but #325,000 globally.
$0
Cups are not the data with which I prefer to work - cups in this game means nothing after 2400 In 1st season (Android) was statistic (about 2 years ago) which show what only less 5% of all players finished it. Now it’s
Last year (from March to December) I spent 300PLN, this is about 80$.
This year about 30$. Mostly I do not regret spending money on VIP or small offers here and there, but I do regret buying ToL offers. I won’t make that mistake again.
Well, we hear from Bernard King (bless his diamond encrusted socks) here all the time don’t we???
Puzzle Combat is creating An Unique Mobile RPG experience? How clone of EaP (as many others) can creating an UNIQUE RPG experience?
P.S. I am not even sure if a can call it RPG
