Number of Concurrent Evolve Players Drops to 5000

Evolve is easily one of the most overhyped games in recent memory, and its release last month was promoted by various events, real-world parties, and a massive advertising campaign that spanned multiple mediums. Its release was also mired by a lot of controversy, mainly relating to the way it priced its DLC and handled its in-game progression system. 

Evolve's release, at least on Steam, saw a relatively low (but sizable) concurrency of 24 thousand players. Contrast that with CS: Global Offensive's concurrency record of 463K and it becomes clear that the game isn't doing so well, especially for a new multiplayer-oriented title.

As of the time of this writing, only 5 thousand players have logged on to play the game concurrently in the last 24 hours. The numbers don't lie: the game is dying as the numbers dip lower and lower, and nothing–at least in the short term–can be done to fix that.

So where did it all go wrong? How did the creators of the massively popular Left 4 Dead its sequel fire such a massive blank? 

The controversy with the DLC and the progression system can't have helped, but additionally, the game–as I noted in my previous article about Evolve–did not have the same co-op hooks as Left 4 Dead, or the newly released multiplayer co-op title Helldivers. 

There are also too many characters to choose from–determined almost at random at the start of games, making players unable to anchor themselves to any one character, at least early on. This is different from how Left 4 Dead allowed players to choose to play as Zoey, Louis, Francis, or Bill–growing attached to each of them in every subsequent playthrough. Sometimes having too many characters can be too much of a good thing. 

Why do you think Evolve failed to gain traction?