Why Forza Horizon 5 is losing its popularity so quickly

Since its release earlier in November, the latest iteration of Xbox’s flagship racing franchise, Forza Horizon 5, has taken the world by storm. The Game Award-winning title builds upon its predecessors to deliver a nearly perfect open-world racing title featuring a massive roster of cars.

However, quite recently, the player base of Forza Horizon 5 has started to falter. The daily player count has dropped significantly, whereas conversation on social media has also slowed down.

Playground Games have been listening to the community and delivering new cars periodically, so it’s a bit surprising to see the gamer count drop.

With that being said, let’s take an objective look at what could be the reason behind Forza Horizon 5 losing its popularity so quickly.

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Has Forza Horizon 5 taken the foot off the accelerator?

Forza Horizon 5 is an amazing title in its own right. No other racing title can match Forza Horizon 5’s massive car roster or Mexico’s beautiful and diverse open world. While the loss of its popularity might seem surprising, let’s try to look at the matter objectively and figure out why Forza Horizon 5 is losing its appeal.

Bugs and glitches

While Forza Horizon 5 is a fantastic game with a vast world and a deep roster of cars to drive around in, the game’s main flaw is undoubtedly its numerous bugs and glitches.

As seen with titles such as Assassin’s Creed Unity and Cyberpunk 2077, bungs and glitches can drive players off the game. It seems like Forza Horizon 5, though not as extreme as the above titles, might also be suffering from a similar fate.

Quite recently, popular Forza Horizon YouTuber Don Joewon Song shared a post over his community tab, mentioning how much the game is broken for him. As a result, he was unable to return for quite a while.

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Players moving on

Forza Horizon 5 was released on Day 1 of the Game Pass. While Forza Horizon is undoubtedly one of the biggest titles on the service, quite recently, another big game came out on the service.

Halo Infinite launched on December 8 and is available for all Game Pass owners from Day 1.

Looking at Halo Infinite’s massive popularity, it can be deduced that a significant majority of the Game Pass player base has moved on from racing on the streets of Mexico to exploring Zeta Halo on a Warthog.

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8000 years of ban

Forza Horizon 5 brings back the features of custom liveries, where users can create their own designs and share them with the rest of the player base. However, there is also quite a bit of restriction regarding what can and cannot be depicted.

While it’s understandable from the developer’s perspective to keep the game clean, many creative gamers feel bound by shackles. Quite recently, a player was banned for over 8000 years for creating a caricature of Kim Jong-Un on a livery.

There are also quite a few other reasons resulting in players leaving Forza Horizon 5 behind. However, the developers at Playground Games are regularly introducing new cars that will hopefully incentivize users to return to Forza Horizon 5.