Hunt: Showdown is a tense competitive experience, and it’s certainly not for everyone. Still, it’s surprising to learn that 40% of people who have played the game have never killed another player.
Speaking at a recent PC Gamer roundtable, Hunt: Showdown general manager David Fifield cited this fact to demonstrate the difficulty of player retention in today’s crowded competitive shooter landscape. In terms of changing this number, he said that he could like to “[be] able to put more experiences in where that number goes down and more people get to play at least some part of the fun part, or find that mastery before they churn out having never got that achievement.”
It’s worth noting that Steam currently says that 62.9% of players have the achievement for killing one player, which makes that number roughly 37.1% on PC. (It’s likely that the number varies considerably from month to month.) Hunt: Showdown has also had a number of free weekend events over the years, which typically balloons a game’s playerbase.
Still, as someone who played Hunt for about an hour back when it was in Early Access, this number is believable to me. Like many “PvPvE” games out there, death comes fast and furious, and it’s pretty easy to play a few matches without even seeing another player to shoot at.
