The Arc Raiders comparison highlights why concurrent numbers are bad for interpreting trends. Arc Raiders sold 4m in its first 2 weeks and had a peak of 481k. By February it had sold 14m and had a daily peaks around 200-250k. It had 250% more players at that time but half the peak CCU. So player retention was very low, but replacement rate was incredibly high.
If Arc raiders had been front loaded in sales then it's player graph would look exactly like Battlefield 6. The pure retention rate is basically the same.
Retention rate is a massive misconception when it comes to live services games in general. Mostly it's not the same people playing a game that was playing 3-4 months ago. The player base is generally in a constant state of dropout and replacement(which can be returning players). A stable playerbase just means dropout rate and replacement rate are equal. Like I said Sea of Thieves has sold around 12m copies on Steam without ever having more than 66k concurrent players. Most premium live service games are a similar story. They have very stable sales and a constant churn or players.
