Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford has compared gamers' obsession with player counts to that of baseball players. She believes that gamers who obsess over Steam charts have more or less tricked themselves into sports discourse. Ford argues that player counts define studios' success in ways relevant to their genre or niche. Despite this, Ford remains cautious about the impact of player count on the industry, comparing it to the music industry where an album doesn't even chart and a movie is considered a box-office bomb. She also notes that while some gamers use player stats to declare their most hated game "dead, few forms of discourse can match sports fandom for pure toxicity.