Krovven wrote on Nov 4, 2015, 19:31:
What I don't understand is how they can not report them, being a public company. Shareholders deserve to know and should demand to be kept informed.

The various disclosure laws that apply to publicly traded companies don't require them to disclose it. There's all kinds of operational data that companies don't disclose simply because they aren't required to by law, and because the shareholders aren't asking for it.

Most MMO developers stopped disclosing things like subscriber/concurrency numbers years ago, or never released that data at all. When the numbers inevitably begin to decline, it creates negativity in the community and perpetuates a snowball effect as people leave a "dying" game. Meanwhile the shareholders really don't give a shit about that number because it doesn't tell them anything that the financial data doesn't already tell them.

Another way to look at it: because of that snowball effect and bad PR from declining subscriber numbers, continuing to release that info would hit shareholders right in the money.

The subscriber numbers have always been more interesting to the lay-person than the shareholders, anyway.