Josh Ling @ Adopt Me!

I'm not gonna lie, your number are a bit sus. I mean literally that peak is followed by a 100K+ drop quickly after you released the update. And it's been consistently 300-350K since the release. (I've noticed this a few times before too) Mind showing us the graph since the peak?

There's nothing suspicious about it. The update launched at 10:03, people start joining. It peaks at 10:53, 50 mins after launch. People who already played it start leaving. "100k" drop doesn't happen until 12:13, 1h20m after the update launches. This is a typical update pattern

You're making the mistake of tracking peak to drop, but you aren't accounting for the 200,000 players who joined and played within the 50 minutes it took to hit peak. More people join than leave = number goes up. More people leave than join = number goes down. Maths!