Yes.
But when AH launched on steam, we had many thousands of players trying the game. Almost no one subscribed after trial period.
Like 40,000 in 90 days or something like that. HT said he had "around" 1% conversion rate. Which might be below 1% depending on rounding up or down.
Fanbois will claim that Steam is just a bunch of twitch kiddies not flight sim fans. That is a large percentage. But millions of dollars of IL2 are sold through Steam. Tens of thousands of DCS players are introduced through steam. There are tens of thousands of serious flight sim fans on Steam. If the product clicked with the audience, you would have gotten more than ~1% conversion.
That's why it is pointless to "just buy tv ads". You first need to improve your conversion rate on your normal organic traffic. If you don't do that, spending money on tv ads is just whizzing in the wind. HT would love to pour many into ads once he figures out haw to achieve 10% conversion. Until he can figure out what he needs to improve to achieve a reasonable conversion rate, it is just burning money pointlessly. You will just advertise your way into bankruptcy.
So players can make videos, and tell their friends, go to airshows and hand out t-shirts and bumpers stickers until they drop and it won't help much. Once eyes are on product, it is losing to the competition.
The other tactic is to just not worry about that. If the current player count is enough to keep the lights on, just manage the tail end of the life cycle and keep it stable and breaking bugs fixed and don't risk tipping the boat with new development. It's sad to see AH move into that phase of its life cycle, but it is a rational decision. For us its a game, for HT it's his livelihood.
It's not about getting back to 600 players again. It's about extending the current glide slope for as long as possible. Fair enough.
[Edit] Correct me if I'm wrong, Lusche, but it seems to me the player loss rate has flattened noticeably the last couple of years. I think it is down to the durable lifers. They'll probably stay until they drop without a single new line of code. You just have to ignore the occasional whining.
