A lot of PvP happens in ways that don’t line up with the achievement’s intent: NPC kills, friendly fire, achievement hunting, and even scripted events on custom servers all muddy the waters. So, using that stat to gauge genuine PvP demand is shaky at best.
All of which means that number is TOO HIGH. You are just proving the point everyone is making -- there is a very low percentage of PVP players in this game.
@Riamus, I would like to introduce you to your parallel match on the PVP side of the community, @angelvanhelsing!
I am really looking forward to witnessing your in-depth and detailed discussions between you two. Enjoy!
There wouldn't be any reason. Between AI generated nonsense and claims as bad as yours, it's pointless. As I said earlier in this thread, the thread is dead. There's no value in it. Besides, they just proved that there are not many PVP players in this game.
With an estimated 12.37 million total owners, even a conservative estimate of 1–3% real PvP players means there are still between 124,000 and 371,000 people who actually play PvP. That’s definitely more than “not many.” We’re not asking for the whole game to change—just for a few concessions to support this part of the community.
With an estimated 12.37 million total owners, even a conservative estimate of 1–3% real PvP players means there are still between 124,000 and 371,000 people who actually play PvP. That’s definitely more than “not many.” We’re not asking for the whole game to change—just for a few concessions to support this part of the community.
Look at game stats. There are nowhere near even a million people playing the game regularly. We have been through this many times before with GM trying to claim those numbers, so I see no reason to repeat it with you. Especially when you are using the same false and misleading information as him, making it appear that you are just an alt account for him. Maybe that isn't true, but there still isn't any reason to go over this all again. Just look in the millions of PVP players thread (which is where this should really be located).
In case you aren't an alt if his, I'll say the same thing I said to him repeatedly... If you use false or misleading information, you just turn away any support you might have gained by simply asking for more PVP without trying to make it sound like there are tons of PVP players in this game or using AI to try to make your argument for you. If you want to gain support from people for PVP, just keep it simple. People don't want to read AI and they don't want to hear a lot of obviously made up or intentionally misleading information. And if you aren't GM, don't take any data he gives you as being even remotely true. We have been hearing his made up data for years.
Just make a simple post... "Could you add/change X for PVP players? It would really help/be nice/whatever.". And if anyone says there aren't many PVP players, just agree considering it is true and say that you all would like to ask for it. You will find more people supporting you that way. Unfortunately, GM can't seem to do that. Maybe you can?
Also, just as an aside, people don't need a whole paper about why you want something. Shorter is better.
And we didn't care if your writing isn't great. I'm a short post, it didn't need to be anyhow. But even in a longer post, poor writing is better than AI. At worst, put your entire post into AI and simply ask it to fix punctuation without chasing the words.
With an estimated 12.37 million total owners, even a conservative estimate of 1–3% real PvP players means there are still between 124,000 and 371,000 people who actually play PvP. That’s definitely more than “not many.” We’re not asking for the whole game to change—just for a few concessions to support this part of the community.
Nope. It´s the percentage that counts. it´s 97% PvE players. And you can take away like 90% of that 12.37 millions. Most people who own the game don´t play anymore. wich leaves us roughly between 12k and 37k PvP players. Most likely 20K i would say. Not worth it.
I'd go with 20K as a working number, maybe even less. However I wouldn't automatically conclude it was not worth it. My calculus would depend more on what was requested and how much effort it would be. Of the requested changes, the Devs would reject those that aren't what they envision as fitting the theme or design. Of the remaining changes, maybe they only do 40 hours worth for every major release. Or maybe its just a dialog with PvP modders such that the Devs only spend 40 hours every major release on features that empower the PvP modders. There might even be some PvE benefit. For instance, any improvement that kept players from looking through walls, is a minor improvement for PvE.
I will not restrict my AI, I like to see the information, I asked it {how many are still playing, give number as well as % of both PVE and PVP players} also I will try to find little improvements to ask for, I just wanted to get the ball rolling with this one. it seems to have worked IMHO. but I hate being told the devs do not care about me or the PVP I love, and I love to argue, so Yes GM told me about this place, BUT I did not go read all the history of the subject , (I did use the AI to search it. but that's not KNOWing,
(also I will not have the AI make this pretty like I normally do, just for you but I can not promise to keep doing it.) (i just seen the formatting controls above)
here are the results (below), yes you are right about it being LOW, but should we not ask? I love the game, also I am not a HARD CORE PVPer, but love the adrenalin it gives me, I just do not get it in PVP, but I do KNOW how to PvE building bases and such are fun, working out defences for Zombies is simple, but trying to keep it safe from players is MORE fun.
here is the AI's reply:
As of June 2025, "7 Days to Die" has an estimated average of about 26,200–34,600 concurrent players, with daily peaks around 50,000–66,000 and monthly peaks reaching up to 66,643 players Breakdown by Playstyle:
PvE Players:
The vast majority of the player base prefers PvE. Community and developer discussions consistently state that around 90% or more of current players are on private or PvE servers.
These estimates reflect the current, active player base. While millions have bought the game, only a small fraction play PvP, and nearly all active players are focused on PvE.
See, this is why people don't like it. Those numbers aren't available. It will make a guess, which will be most likely far off from the actual numbers. Steam has good numbers. However, console has practically nothing for public daily gameplay data on games and the other platforms have very little, and it's not entirely accurate. If you can't find the data yourself, then AI won't find it either.
As far as your response from it, it appears that it may be using only Steam numbers, which is at least a valid response since it isn't making stuff up. But it also means those numbers are still not accurate. But you can easily see that you're looking at only 500-2000 PVP players from that. If you add in the rest of the platforms (console can't do much PVP with only up to four players at a time, depending on the console, until dedicated servers come out, so you have practically none from them. Even after dedicated servers are out, they will only be able to play up to 8 players at a time. For the other platforms, my guess (this is a guess) is that Steam has the higher percentage of players from any single other platform for this game. So altogether, that 500-2000 may double... if you are lucky. That's a VERY small number of players for the devs to want to focus on PVP when they designed the game for PVE.
Also, keep in mind that I did NOT say not to ask. I recommended asking without trying to make it sound like there are "millions" of PVP players the way GM does (he even said there were millions of people playing this game on console in China... another false response coming from AI due to poorly written prompts). I also pointed out that you'll get more support without using PVP to write for you. Look at this thread. What amount of it actually relates to your PVP suggestions compared to relating to AI? Do you think that's good for the discussion of PVP if the majority of comments have nothing to do with PVP (other than pointing out incorrect information, which isn't going to benefit any request to get PVP support)? You can do anything you want. I made a suggestion to try to HELP you. I've tried to help GM as well. If you guys aren't interested in advice that could improve your chances of getting support for your PVP requests, that's up to you. It doesn't matter to me. The only part of it that does matter to me is when false or misleading "data" is being used to promote PVP. I'll point out the errors each time I see it, and so will many others here. I'm not even against support for PVP as long as it doesn't negatively impact PVE. I just won't support using fake or misleading data.
And I'll remind you that they are working to finish the game and are already behind schedule by 6+ months. They aren't going to put much effort into PVP stuff before 4.0 because that will just delay them finishing the game even more. You can still ask for things, but don't expect much until after 4.0. That's just the reality of it. And I still recommend keeping your suggestions concise. You can still add replies to a thread that tell why you think PVP should be supported, but the OP is received far better by people if they can quickly and easily see what's being asked for or suggested without having to read a wall of text about it. Let your OP be clear and simple and then if you really want to add more about why PVP should be supported, do that as a follow-up reply. You really will get more support from people that way. But it's up to you. Take the advice or not.
Hmmm....I've never read developers giving out numbers like this. It is always players with no insider knowledge giving their opinions usually to bolster their arguments. Maybe it's true but I wouldn't rely on a preponderance of forum opinions as an actual reputable source of truth. This is another problem with AI. AI can't seem presently to sort legitimate sources from nonlegitimate sources very well. In AI generated news stories there is often inaccuracies because it just captures everything it finds on the topic and then summarizes. Rumor, opinion, actual facts all get collected and summarized and then presented as news.
That being said, I believe that more than 90% of the current players are on private or PvE servers....
Sure, they might be nice to hang out with. Some people are even taking it a bit far, lately; I haven't even tried myself. You can even point out to one that "the bandits didn't actually come out Q2 '25". And that's my gripe with this use of it. The person behind the post didn't do even a cursory sanity check on it, it probably contains none of their actual opinions and if you ask them for clarification, they'll have to come up with it on the spot.
There's a non-zero chance I'm wrong, but I don't find this sentence worth typing out ..
I recently struggled with the google AI, kept getting different and all incorrect answers to the question:
Was the IJN Soryu a violation of the naval treaties Japan had signed back in 1922 and 1930?
anyone curious about these treaties can type that question into google AI, and maybe make a video when you select 'deep dive', just to get some proof that that particular AI just makes things up as it goes.
I only needed to read this thread as far as the post I quoted, the rest will go unread. Just another thread by some PK'er, trying to once again bring PvP/PK'ers some joy, at the expense of yet another game franchise.
Hmmm....I've never read developers giving out numbers like this. It is always players with no insider knowledge giving their opinions usually to bolster their arguments. Maybe it's true but I wouldn't rely on a preponderance of forum opinions as an actual reputable source of truth. This is another problem with AI. AI can't seem presently to sort legitimate sources from nonlegitimate sources very well. In AI generated news stories there is often inaccuracies because it just captures everything it finds on the topic and then summarizes. Rumor, opinion, actual facts all get collected and summarized and then presented as news.
That being said, I believe that more than 90% of the current players are on private or PvE servers....
That 10% came from that site wehre you can see all the 7 days servers and their population and it had also a stat showing how many people are playing on those servers overall. I checked that like 5 times during one day and it was always around 10% of the overall playercount from steam.
The mod team and the devs have said this also a few times over the years, not with exact numbers but that the vast majority plays SP or private MP.
You could also simply use the game to check that if someone has too much time on their hands. Just rank the servers after playercount and go trough every region.
I recently struggled with the google AI, kept getting different and all incorrect answers to the question:
Was the IJN Soryu a violation of the naval treaties Japan had signed back in 1922 and 1930?
anyone curious about these treaties can type that question into google AI, and maybe make a video when you select 'deep dive', just to get some proof that that particular AI just makes things up as it goes.
I only needed to read this thread as far as the post I quoted, the rest will go unread. Just another thread by some PK'er, trying to once again bring PvP/PK'ers some joy, at the expense of yet another game franchise.
Just to clarify, I’m using Perplexity, which is different from ChatGPT or Google AI. Perplexity focuses on providing up-to-date, fact-checked answers and pulls from current data and community trends, not just older training data or search rankings. I prefer this approach because it helps me get the most accurate info—especially for games like 7 Days to Die.
I respect your opinion on this. PvP is already part of the game, and while it’s true that it’s just a minor following compared to PvE, it’s there for those of us who want a little more challenge or variety. I’m not asking for the whole game to change, just hoping for a few concessions so the PvP crowd can enjoy it too.
BTW just for fun I asked it your question,
how did it do?
An AI will give you an answer, but I worry it doesn't have any solid information with which to formulate a correct answer for this prompt. Did you ask it to give you the sources of it's information so that you could attempt to verify the answer?
The AI has been fed the Internet. Among that data is going to be a lot of opinion, such as conversations like this. It is going to have trouble telling fact from fiction unless it has found some really authoritative sources of data.
I tried your prompt {How many people are still playing 7 Days to Die? Give number as well as % of both PVE and PVP players} with ChatGPT 4o. It searched the web. It reported the number of concurrent players (33,000) and estimated the distribution was 10% to 20% PvP.
I asked for its source for the number of concurrent users and it said "Steam Charts" and said the concurrent number of players was 42,385 (not 33,000). I went to Steam Charts myself and found 42,385. It also listed steamdb.info reporting 40,700 and 49,245 as a 24-hour peak. I could verify those values, roughly. I saw 42,919 as current. It listed Steam's Official Stats Page but I couldn't seem to verify that source. I'm sure it's there, but I didn't manage to search Steam's pages in a way that led to an answer.
But that's the concurrent users. "Still playing" suggests not just concurrent, but active. When prompted for a number of unique players over the past 3 months, it didn't have a source for that information. It said Third-Party estimators like PlayTracker suggest 494,000 active players but that the AI couldn't tell the timeframe being used.
When I asked it how it came up with a 10%-20% estimate for the number of PvP players, it said it's sources were: Reddit Discussions and the number of PvP servers listed on platforms like BattleMetrics, concluding "PvP-tagged servers are a minority, and many of those have very low player populations." Then it said it based its estimate on other games, like Ark and Rust plus how the games are marketed.
You see, it's guessing and it lacks good methods -- much like we all are as we don't have good sources of data.
The AI has been fed the Internet. Among that data is going to be a lot of opinion, such as conversations like this. It is going to have trouble telling fact from fiction unless it has found some really authoritative sources of data.
You’re absolutely right—AI answers about player counts and PvP/PvE breakdowns in 7 Days to Die are only as good as the sources available. For my numbers, I asked Perplexity (an AI that focuses on citing up-to-date sources and fact-checking) to pull the latest stats and community estimates. Here’s what it found, with sources you can check:
Current concurrent players: About 27,500–49,800, depending on the time of day, according to Steam Charts and SteamDB123.
Total owners: Roughly 12.37 million, per SteamSpy and SteamDB3.
As for the PvE/PvP split, there’s no official breakdown published by the developers. Most estimates (including those from Reddit discussions, server browser stats, and community polls) suggest PvP players make up only about 1–3% of the active player base, with the rest being PvE or co-op456. That means, out of a daily peak of ~50,000, probably 500–1,500 are doing PvP, and the rest are PvE.
I agree that these are estimates based on indirect evidence—like server tags, community surveys, and anecdotal reports—because the game doesn’t publish detailed stats. But I always try to cite where the numbers come from so anyone can check or challenge them.
So, you’re right to be skeptical, and I appreciate the push for transparency. I use Perplexity because it’s designed to cite its sources and flag when it’s making an estimate, not just “guess” based on vibes or mix opinion with fact7. If you want to verify the numbers, you can check Steam Charts, SteamDB, and browse server lists on BattleMetrics for yourself.
Bottom line: The numbers are estimates, but they’re grounded in the best public data and community consensus available right now. If you find better or more recent data, I’d be glad to update my info!
You make a good point—AI is only as reliable as the information it’s trained on and the sources it pulls from. It can process huge amounts of data, but it doesn’t have “common sense” the way people do, and it can’t always distinguish between fact and opinion unless the data is really solid. That’s why I always try to check where the numbers come from and make it clear when something is just an estimate or based on community consensus.
I agree: being smart (or having access to lots of data) isn’t the same as having good judgment or common sense. AI is still catching up in that department, and it’s important for us to keep questioning and double-checking the answers it gives.
A note about the data that you're getting from Steam Charts and SteamDB. The data set there is a bit limited as it can only count players who have public profiles that advertise game activity. Everyone that plays in Offline mode, has a private profile, or is set to show their status as offline will not show up in those lists.
As for the PvE/PvP split, there’s no official breakdown published by the developers. Most estimates (including those from Reddit discussions, server browser stats, and community polls) suggest PvP players make up only about 1–3% of the active player base, with the rest being PvE or co-op456. That means, out of a daily peak of ~50,000, probably 500–1,500 are doing PvP, and the rest are PvE.
According to the data I polled in the previous thread, it was just barely over 1% of players being PvP, and that was counting peak numbers on a holiday weekend. The total was less than 500 players total. This is the known values from server counts, so it does not count co-op or private games.
I'm intrigued by Perplexity and plan to give it a try professionally. In terms of this discussion, I asked Perplexity the original prompt. It does nicely give sources. The source for it's 1%-3% estimate of PvP players...
I'm not suggesting Perplexity is a bad tool. Indeed, it has a healthy approach to sourcing. But it is struggling to find relevant information, as are we all.
Thank you, @SylenThunder, for taking the time to review the numbers and clarify how the data is gathered. I appreciate your attention to detail and your willingness to share server-based stats from your previous thread. It’s important to recognize the limitations of sources like Steam Charts and SteamDB, since they don’t capture private, offline, or co-op sessions, and your input helps keep the conversation grounded in what’s actually verifiable.
Thanks again for helping keep the discussion accurate and constructive!
