There Are Free-To-Play MMOs That Literally Nobody Plays

Jason Winter
By Jason Winter, News Editor
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Otherland 8

"Nobody plays that game anymore" is usually a tired attack on a game that may not be what it once was, but still has a reasonable number of players. It may not be thriving, it may not be as huge as it used to be, but you can usually still log in and find someone, somewhere. It just might take a while.

That's not the case with some online games. On a whim, I decided to look at the lowest-rated free-to-play massively multiplayer games on Steam and cross-reference their player numbers on SteamCharts. And I found that sometimes, yes, it is literally true that "nobody plays that game."

Here's maybe the highest-profile (relatively speaking) F2P game I found while scraping the bottom of the barrel on Steam: Otherland. It was in development for years! We even did a First Look on it! That video has over 50,000 views, which is about 250 times more than the game's peak population, which was reported at 200 back in its launch month of September 2015.

Even that tepid total would be phenomenal today. According to SteamCharts, the game's peak population in the last month was 10 players, with an average online concurrency of less than two. So there are undoubtedly times when nobody is actually playing Otherland. For people who loved the novels, that's a Tad tragic.

If you really want to dig deep, though, to find the dead-est Free MMO on Steam, then you need go no further than Garlock Online. The 22% positive review rating should be enough to make you stay away, but if it isn't, how about this: According to SteamCharts, Garlock Online had a player ... in March. That's it for 2017. One. Player. Six months ago. Suddenly, LawBreakers doesn't look so bad.

The game is still listed on Steam, and it looks like you can download it, so it's probably not shut down. I thought about downloading it and trying it myself, just to see if that was the case, but I didn't want to mess with the purity of that one player from March. I'll let him or her enjoy that achievement.

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In this article: Otherland, Garlock Online.

About the Author

Jason Winter
Jason Winter, News Editor

Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.

More Stories by Jason Winter

Discussion (5)

voydd 7 years ago
I looked up Otherland on steam again and it looks like they came back on developing it. There were about 7 blog entries in August. A sign of hope perhaps?

H4n5o 7 years ago
after reading the Otherland books i was really excited to see Otherland as MMO. But after the download(which took like forever) i was also disappointed of the whole make up of the game and it was in very early stages. Maybe i´ll give it another shot.

Flevalt 7 years ago
The tad pun lol

Derpina 7 years ago
I enjoy the concept and theme. I played it... Sadly, it was in no playable shape. My quests broke, the game would trap me, the game would freeze, there were missing assets all over the place. Broken NPC's, and lots of other horrible things that left it unplayable. The design (colors, sci fi theme) was great. And I enjoyed questing in the outlandish areas...I'd be playing if it was updated. Even then though, when we were open to its current beta stage...no one was online. So you end up with this "wwell, I am in a single player empty game that is broken and a hassle to play, what is the point?" If they polished it, got a few more people, I might go back in.

rickshaw 7 years ago
My problem with otherland when it first launched was the download it took forever, once in there, i found the game play total disappointing and had know real reason to play onward, it became confusing & the npc did nothing. Its a shame, as the trailers were so far fetched it was unbelievable. which turned out to be just that anyway, unbelievable.
it all the reasons why there's not a soul in the game today.


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