Darkspore averaged 4.5 Steam players in month before delisting

Darkspore's temporary delisting from Steam followed a 30-day period in which the game was struggling to reach an average of 4.5 daily users on the digital distribution service and saw only 22 players at its peak, according to the game's SteamCharts statistics.

The game has struggled over the past year after steadily losing its Steam userbase at the end of December 2012. According to the public statistics, by the end of last year Darkspore saw a 520 percent rise in players — likely the result of a sale on the distribution platform — which took its monthly peak users from 37 players in the previous month to 550 users. This dropped drastically by 84 percent in January 2013 — a month that saw an average daily playership of 11.

Speaking to Polygon, an Electronic Arts representative confirmed that Darkspore reached a peak playerbase of 55 users over the last week across all digital distribution services and on Windows PC. Over the last month, the game reached a peak playerbase of 71 users on its servers — 49 of which were not using Steam to run the game.

When contacted for comment, EA stated the game and its servers will continue to be supported, even despite this meager fanbase.

"There certainly appears to be some confusion stemming from a recent forum post," a representative from the publisher told Polygon, referring to an earlier post on the game's official forum stating Darkspore was all but abandoned by its developers.

"Maxis continues to support Darkspore and its servers. We recently resolved a problem where players were having issues connecting to the game. The post in question came from a moderator who is not an employee of EA. That post has been updated to reflect accurate information. Players experiencing technical issues should contact help.ea.com for customer support."

The game has suffered from server-side issues since launch that have resulted in players being unable to log in to the game. Despite initially being removed from Steam the game remained available for purchase through Origin. Steam has since re-listed Darkspore.