Activision Blizzard says they will no longer announce subscriber counts for
World of Warcraft, their subscription MMORPG. In
yesterday's
financial reporting they revealed the game is down to 5.5 million
subscribers, which is still impressive, but well under half the game's peak.
With their user count getting smaller every time around, they no longer feel
this is in their best interests to continue publicizing the game's gradual
decline.
GameSpot quotes how they explained this during their post-earnings
conference call: "Note that this is the last quarter that we plan to provide
subscriber numbers," the company said. "There are other metrics that are better
indicators of the overall Blizzard business performance."