Key Takeaways
- Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero started strong but lost 90% of players within a month, impacting its success.
- Issues like balancing problems and cheating complaints have contributed to the game’s decline.
- Despite the drop, the game may recover with upcoming content releases and Bandai’s history of supporting Dragon Ball games.
When its early access launched on October 7, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero got off to a flying start. Within 24 hours, the game became the most-played fighting game in Steam history, beating the likes of Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and Mortal Kombat 11.
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Less than a month later, however, the game is struggling to retain players, losing 90% of those who jumped in during its first few days.
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s Quick Fall From Grace
When it launched, public sentiment around Sparking Zero was great. It released with an 85% score on Opencritic, scoring a 4.5/5 from us here at TheGamer, and sold three million copies within its first 24 hours. This culminated in the game peaking at 122,554 concurrent players, significantly higher than its contemporaries, with Street Fighter 6 holding the previous record at 70,540.
Fast-forward a few weeks, and for the last two days, the game has been peaking at around 15,500 players, more than an 87% drop since launch, according to SteamDB.
While such a drop-off might be expected from a single-player title, a multiplayer game losing such a significant portion of its player base in such a short period of time is a concern—Sparking Zero, coincidentally, has now failed to beat Street Fighter 6’s daily concurrent player count since Sunday, October 27.
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero has been peaking at around 15,500 players, more than an 87% drop since launch.
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero has been marred with player complaints since launch. These have arisen from the game having some major balancing issues, particularly with Yajirobe, unsportsmanlike players who abuse “broken” mechanics, an influx of cheaters, and exceedingly difficult single-player battles, which led Bandai Namco to release a statement, which have all likely contributed to the game’s downfall.
Although the player count is looking a little bleak, there’s still hope for Sparking Zero, as Bandai typically supports its Dragon Ball games for extended periods of time. As of now, the game has at least three further pieces of content featuring 20 new characters to come, focusing on Dragon Ball Z: Super Hero and Dragon Ball Daima, so there’s plenty of time for a redemption arc.
Considered part to the Budokai Tenkachi series, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is an in-development arena fighter developed by Spike Chunsoft and published by Namco Bandai.