'2 Million Players'
(media.scored.co)
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"Playercount" obsession has been a growing issue in gaming for a while.
From both ends of the spectrum. As in "oh no no no the single player game doesn't have 100k players anymore after two months! FLOP SHAZAM FLOP!!!" all the way to "it has 2 million players, its a massive success because the console numbers make that 10 million that number is huge!!"
And of course, gaming companies made note of it. That's why they obsessively do posts like that about their "huge milestone" of players for every release, to try and get people with that FOMO.
Its always worth remembering that 5 million sales was the goal for EA with Dead Space 3, which they considered a "passable number" for a single player game with MTX. And that was over a decade ago when the industry was a fraction of its current size and budgets for games were even smaller than that.
So for a 2025 mainstream AAA title with full MTX and battlepass, massive marketing and many delays, the necessary player number for it to be a success is probably in the 8 figure range.
From the perspective of a customer, sales numbers are irrelevant for the most part. In fact if a game is good, flopping is good for you since it means you'll be able to buy it cheap. The only thing you can really say is you want games you like to sell well so they get sequels, but sequels have no guarantee of quality anyway (e.g. Dragon Age).
What's super strange is how emotional the left gets about this shit, like trannies on streams crying over Concord flopping. FFS. Who cares? It doesn't affect you in the least.
Its useful in the sense of "can I expect a lot of people online" if it has multiplayer or, as you said, a vague use in "is there a chance of a sequel?" But that's the literal only use it has for you as the consumer.
Also this plague unfortunately effects more than just the Left. Most video game forums of any type get way too obsessive about these numbers, treating them as some sort of gospel about the quality and value of the game.
The Concord thing I 100% believe was them being more upset that "the Chuds won" than any actual care about the game. They weren't ever going to play it, but its failure is a huge blow to their control of the industry and convincing companies to make games Woker.