Most common cause if the delayed effect of the recession IRL. Which finally started to affect the community and the economy of EU. Prices will be dropping (Bubble effect) extremely in the next few months.
After which people probably will start buying the cheap items, which has increase on the economy again, a positive effect.
Most of the RL economies are stabilizing at the moment. But in EU this will take some time as the recession is just hitting the RCE of EU now.
Time will tell.
it's exactly the opposite: when recession, gambling games are allways super-healthy, dreams become necessary when we cannot project our money success in the society we're living. lotery and jackpot-alike games popularity is even bigger when you go in a very poor country for that reason. (not to mention a big poker room that just celebrated 50 billions hands played when the 40 billions whas not even 1 year ago. ) And MA certainly perfectly understood it and adapted their big loot system to make it spit greater and greater numbers, not once in a month but every 2 days ;-)) and see the results: how many more players are running cnd with big amps and killing big mobs in the hope to "Finally"(sic) hit the big!!
However imo the persons leaving are not directly because of the recession, it doesn't make them invest much less in the game,but more because of what MA did to take advantage of irl recession to attract more people, eventually to make actual players deposit more. It is due to retribution mechanics, the 20% return for hundreds and ATH for one. This variability in the outcomes is in the same time killing game by frustration and makes ppl leave, but in the same time it certainly makes the actual big players deposit even more because it tend to make one loose his rationalism when seeing these big numbers..so it is certainly retaining the less healthy players lol
the others, instead of beeing able to ply 25 days with their deposit, are broken after 3 days even with opalo on daikibas, just because they wanted to play 3 hours instead of 2 a. And as they are reasonnable they don't deposit more and finish by leaving the game because they have no control on what they do.
You're right about the low items little up in mu and sales, but it's not due to recession, but again because some ppl cannot afford to play their previous level wich was going well for them monthes before, because of this variance affecting a standard run that makes you bankrupt in 4 cycles. Again it is due to how MA tried to act exactly like poker and casino rooms that every day make more jackpots and things likeso but the difference is in the rooms it does not affect the ratio of your good hands at tables and what you do with them, or the ratio you're loosing/winning at a slot machine. When in EU this strategy affects negatively directly every player on the ground, even the one that gets ath because he will go probably loose for ages after that
What i tried to say is that althought the recession did not impact EU or any money game negatively, all of them "used" the recession to attract more people with jackpots, but MA is the only one able to change the probabilities of what you get in the loot window, and so that crap balance we have, and probably the only one that had to "fake" it, in the lotery and online rooms they did naturally attract more people so the jackpots increased, then they have promotional partners, but MA had to tune the ATH system it was not naturally build by more frequentation, and the only having no money incoming by beeing partners of big events like W/EPT tournaments that have never been so popular than now in crisis time!
They act like poker and casino rooms in every move, it's just they are not supposed to be so and hence they sure are not, as wherever poker room i go I allways have 1/13 to get an ace on the first card i recieve.
And i'm sure MA is not making more money in% with this balance system, but if it increased the amount deposited and cycled (through 109' runs hihi) they will go on, even if the players base decrease by 3x, even if there was only 3 persons left but depositing 1 millions each a month ..
I agree with op, something should be done
regards
Filibert