Valve auto battler Dota Underlords' playerbase has dropped by over 80 percent

Things are looking worrying for Dota Underlords.

Valve's early access auto battler has lost most of its playerbase since its launch on Steam six months ago.

As discovered by eagle-eyed Reddit user Sharkylzrod, Steam Charts shows a peak of 200,000 users playing concurrently when it first launched back in June, but a mere 15,000 players over the past day.

The average player count in Dota Underlords has likewise been dropping monthly, recently hitting just over 11,000 users, with a peak player count of just under 20,000. That's a drop in playerbase of over 80 percent, and a drop in peak player count of over 90 percent.

Valve developed the game for mobile, PC, and Linux following the success of Dota Auto Chess, a community-built game mode within Dota 2. Dota Auto Chess was itself a phenomenon, with over seven million players within the first three months of going live.

With those numbers in tow, Valve naturally took an interest in the game mode. The publisher met with Chinese-based developer Drodo Studio to discuss a potential collaboration on Dota Auto Chess but failed to come to an agreement. As a result, Dota Underlords was born. The Chinese team has also been working on its own spin-off for mobile – simply called Auto Chess.