PS Plus game Foamstars has lost nearly 95% of its player base

Foamstars' PS Plus player count has dropped almost 95% since the game's day-one launch on PS5, PS4, and PS Plus Essential back in February 2024.

PS Plus game Foamstars has lost nearly 95% of its player base
Lee Brady

Lee Brady

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Despite receiving a strong initial burst of PS Plus subscribers when those Foamstars trophies arrived day one on the service back in February 2024, it seems Foamstars' PS Plus player count has seemingly been in freefall ever since. Now, two months later, it seems players have all but abandoned Foamstars for other PS5 multiplayer games with the shooter having lost over 94% of its initial PS Plus player base.

New Foamstars content can't reverse plummeting PS5 player count

  • Foamstars debuted with more players in its first week than Helldivers 2
  • However, Foamstars has since lost over 94% of its PS5 and PS4 player count
  • The Square Enix shooter has since dropped out of our top 200 PlayStation Chart
Using gameplay data from over 3.1 million active PSN accounts (courtesy of our partnership with GameInsights), we had previously reported that Foamstars' initial PS5 and PS4 player count had already began to fall shortly after the game's day-one as one of February 2024's monthly PS Plus games.
While Foamstars had initially seen a stronger debut player count than Sony's successful Helldivers 2 (which launched the same week), that first week high eroded quickly, and the game dropped 54% of its player base in just two weeks. Now, two months after the game's launch on PS5 and PS4, we can see that Foamstars' player count has dropped 94.92% from its debut player count (data taken from week ending Sunday, April 7, 2024).

The percentage of this Foamstars player count drop is actually a conservative estimate. As our exclusive data tracks only the top 200 PS5 and PS4 games in any given week, and seeing as Foamstars no longer ranks among the top 200, we have instead had to use the player count data from the 200th most popular PS5 game (CarX Drift Racing Online) to establish a low bar for Foamstars' player count drop.

This means that Foamstars has lost at least 94.92% of its initial PS Plus-enabled player count — a more accurate figure would almost certainly be higher.
This is all despite the fact that Foamstars has continued to receive new content, and will even kick off its third season with a new character and new events on Friday, April 12, 2024. Sadly, previous attempts to win back players — like Foamstars getting a new DLC trophy for PS5 and PS4 — failed to prevent the game from bleeding more players every week since launch. Given that this is a live-service game (and so dependent on a recurring base of players to survive), this is all obviously bad news for Foamstars' hopes of staying online.

In many ways, it's a bit of a shame that this Square Enix experiment didn't really catch on. Having dabbled in the game myself, the gameplay definitely has a good flow to it — it lacks a bit of that Splatoon polish, but it's at least just as frantic and messy.

However, whether it's the game's price tag (it's not a free-to-play game), its frustrating live-service elements (cosmetics and battle passes are pricy), or just the fact that there are other, better multiplayer games to play right now (like Helldivers 2), Foamstars is simply not catching on with PS5 and PS4 players.
It's easy to envision a time not too long ago when a game like Foamstars could have been one of the best PS Plus games around. Sadly, our data suggests the game just missed the mark with players. Do you think there's hope for Foamstars to recover in the near future? Does it deserve to have lost most of its PS Plus player base? Let us know down in the comments.

Chart compiled using gameplay data from over 3.1 million active PlayStation accounts (not just TrueTrophies accounts). Chart information is copyright GameInsights. Regarding this data:
  • When an account opens a game, this is registered as a game being played. Accounts can only register a game once per week.
  • Our data is good for suggesting general trends — we represent this using percentages, not numbers.
Written by Lee Brady
News Editor Lee covers the latest upcoming PS5 games like Ghost of Yotei while making sure PlayStation Plus’ classic PS1 and PS2 games are given enough respect. Lee leads the charge on our original data analysis courtesy of Game Lens. His 25 years of PlayStation experience compliments his love of Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Sonic the Hedgehog.
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