When a Franchise Goes Quiet, Players Go Elsewhere
Activision has said nothing about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for years. No sequel announcement, no remaster rumor, no DLC tease – just silence from the publisher while FromSoftware’s catalog has grown louder around it. For a game that won multiple Game of the Year awards in 2019 and built one of the most dedicated fanbases in the soulslike genre, that quiet has started to feel less like patience and more like abandonment.
And when players feel abandoned, they move. Right now, a growing number of Sekiro fans are redirecting their energy toward Lies of P, the 2023 Neowiz soulslike built around a dark retelling of Pinocchio. The migration is visible across Reddit threads, Discord servers, and YouTube comment sections, where players who spent hundreds of hours in Ashina are now posting their Lies of P completion times and asking where the sequel to that game might land.
What Lies of P Is Doing Right
Lies of P launched to strong reviews but initially sat in the shadow of heavier soulslike releases. It found a solid audience, but its long-term staying power was uncertain. What has changed is the context around it. With Sekiro effectively dormant and Elden Ring players awaiting the next major FromSoftware project, there is a gap in the market for a tightly designed, narrative-driven soulslike with distinct style – and Lies of P fills that gap better than almost anything else currently available.
The game’s weapon assembly system, which lets players mix and match handles and blades to create hybrid weapons, appeals specifically to Sekiro veterans who appreciated the depth of that game’s prosthetic tool mechanics. The parry-heavy combat loop also translates well. Sekiro players already know how to read attack windows and commit to deflections rather than rolls – exactly the skillset Lies of P rewards. The mechanical overlap is not coincidental, but the game does enough differently to feel like a destination rather than a consolation prize.
Neowiz has also handled its community with visible care. The developer has communicated about patches, engaged with feedback, and confirmed that a sequel – currently titled Lies of P: Overture – is in development. That ongoing dialogue stands in sharp contrast to the radio silence from Activision’s end on Sekiro, and players notice the difference between a studio that talks to them and one that doesn’t.
Activision’s Pattern and Its Cost
This is not the first time Activision’s extended quiet on a beloved title has pushed its audience toward competitors. Activision’s Spyro silence pulled fans back to Reignited in a similar way – players revisiting old ground because nothing new was being offered. The dynamic repeats because the underlying cause is the same: fans with active interest and nowhere to direct it will find somewhere to go.
The cost to Activision is harder to quantify than raw sales numbers, but it is real. Every month that Sekiro sits unacknowledged is a month where players build attachment to other franchises, other developers, other communities. When and if Activision does announce something Sekiro-related, it will be competing for attention with studios that never stopped talking to their players. That is a different kind of market than the one Sekiro launched into in 2019.
Why the Silence Hits Harder With Sekiro Specifically
Sekiro is unusual among its peers because it has no multiplayer component and no ongoing content structure. There is no live service hook, no seasonal event, no co-op community to keep players logging back in. The game is a single, contained experience – which means the only thing that keeps fans engaged over time is the hope of more. Strip that away, and the audience has no mechanical reason to stay.
That structural reality makes publisher communication more important for Sekiro than it would be for something like Elden Ring, which has active PvP and co-op ecosystems to sustain engagement between announcements. Sekiro fans are entirely dependent on narrative hope – the belief that something more is coming. When Activision provides nothing to feed that hope, the belief erodes, and players redistribute their attention accordingly.
Lies of P benefits from this not just because of its mechanical similarities, but because it offers exactly what Sekiro currently cannot: a future. There is a sequel coming. There is a developer posting updates. There is a community forming around something that is growing rather than frozen. For a player who wants to invest in a soulslike world for the long term, the choice between a dormant classic and an active franchise with a roadmap is not a difficult one.
The harder question is whether Activision understands what it is losing in the gap. Sekiro’s community is not disappearing – it is relocating, and it is building loyalty elsewhere in the process. By the time any official Sekiro news surfaces, Lies of P: Overture may already have its own established fanbase drawing from exactly the players who should have been Activision’s most eager audience.
