All the Controversy and, still, very few people are playing Depression Quest

The human race enjoys a good bit of drama, which is why the allegations against Zoe Quinn and the cast of the Usual Suspects is crashing internet forums and causing controversy up and down. The game at the heart of all this, Depression Quest, is still relatively ignored, despite tens of thousands of people obsessing over its creator.

According to Steam Charts, a site that lets you see how many people have been playing a game in a given time, Depression Quest did fairly well out of the gate. Considering its content, it was managing to attract hundreds of people an hour, a point helped by the soap opera that was going on around Zoe Quinn and by the fact that it’s free-to-play. Within a couple of days, this had fallen to around 40-90 people an hour with occasional bursts back up to the 150 mark (presumably after some positive press).

In the last twelve hours or so, allegations of corruption have spread Quinn’s name (and a good deal else) across the web, backed up by the sudden disappearance of any negative mention of her on YouTube, Reddit and on certain other sites. There’s a thread of over ten thousand deleted comments on /R/Games, where a mod is allegedly pulling strings to defend the “victimized” developer. 

And despite all that, players of Depression Quest have risen over slightly: jumping from around the 70-80 mark to only a little over 100. For comparison, Divine Souls (released two days after Depression Quest) has 200+. Sure, it’s a more universal gaming experience than Depression Quest, but I bet nobody could name any of its creator’s sexual partners either, so it’s a give and take sort of thing.