Dual Universe

VS

Scum

Dual Universe, released in 2020 by Novaquark, is a science fiction sandbox MMO focused on a persistent, single-shard universe. Despite original hype for its player-driven world and voxel building, the game has struggled post-release with population retention due to technical obstacles and lack of mainstream adoption. As a niche MMO with modest backing and limited expansions, current daily active players are likely in the low hundreds.

Scum is a multiplayer open-world survival game developed by Gamepires and originally entered Early Access in 2018. While it is not a full MMO, it supports servers with dozens of players (up to 64 per server). The game maintains a niche but dedicated following and is frequently updated; however, it has never reached large mainstream status. Based on long-term trends of similar survival games, its daily active player base is estimated to be in the low thousands, and this estimate would hold unless a major relaunch or expansion revitalized the player base.