Chess variant shrinking here?

According to data from database.lichess.org/, chess games and chess variants games boosted greatly in mid-2020, probably due to the pandemic shutdown. Game count of almost all categories tripled from 2019.06 to 2021.06, and doubled in the first 6 monthes of 2020.

Since then, chess games on Lichess are keeping a stable level of 90~100M per month (PvP rated). Though we can say games are also reducing slightly recent months, they are still more than 85% of the peak value.

However, game counts of ALL chess variants EXCEPT FOR Chess960 shrinked greatly since their peak at mid 2021. Antichess (solved) shrinked from 535k way to 347k, Atomic from 574k to 247k, Horde from 115k to 73k, and Racing kings from 146k to 65k, etc. There are no signs of fluctuation, they just reduce all the way, losing around HALF of their active games.
Chess960 keeps thriving though, even shows better data than chess itself recently. But it is also essentially chess, not really a "chess vatiant".

The game count data isn't everything, but there are still such questions:

Are chess variants really shrinking here, considering games,active players and new players?
Should we promote them from distinguishing, or should we just delete those unpopular&boring ones?
And...how to?

Seemingly the variants closer to chess (with more chess-like rules, e.g. horde, crazyhouse, KOTH) are better-living, losing about 1/3 of their games.
Variants played in a way very different from chess (e.g. racing kings, atomic) are losing significantly more players, more than 1/2 of their peak and still losing quickly.
Chess960 is not losing players because it is almost chess.

Also considering chess.com is boasting their increasingly popular chess variants led by "chaturanga" and "4p chess", since late 2020 and boomed in 2021...
I also wonder whether people in charge here see this as a result of competition, or just natural loss of people's interest?

Yeah, people simply don’t like it. Some random movements on a checkered board. Horde, dafuq?

We‘ve all been waiting for the 960 boom (for 15 years or so). It’s cooommming! Not. Still a one-digit percentage, in the otb world de facto non-existing.

chess.com holds (patented) Trice's chess from NM Ed Trice, and S-chess from IM Bruce Harper and GM Yasser Seirawan. These are more commercial games from USA than chess. S-chess seems to be in good shape and has regular tournaments, while Trice’s chess not as well. They show there are still some bunch of players...even for absurd variants.

Though from the perspective of active player numbers they are still incomparable to the Lichess variants.

There are probably more people playing chess960 on chess.com, but they don't open up their data to public so we won't know how many people plays there.

Was just about to start a thread about the lack of 960 action on this site! The hourly arenas are all too blitzy for me & the lobby has tumbleweed rolling thru and a random guy who wants to play some weird time format like 7+15

@Cheshire_the_Maomao We must also consider the recent chess booms left a lot of brutalized newbies, who maybe moved on variants before quitting all together. Only some of the noobs like me became hardcore chessers

@Tuck_Fheory said in #7:
>
I agree. The chess boom in 2020-2021 brought lots of players here. But they do not seem draining away that quickly as chess and chess960 total games are not decreasing much.
The question is only variants games/players disappeared and for some variants they reduces extremely and probably extinguish in some years...why is there a difference in the newbie rush&quit?

Is there any data that how many active players are here for each varinat instead of game counts?
(For example, this account is for leisure and not very active in chess game, I mainly play on another streaming account)

@Cheshire_the_Maomao I think the noobs soon find out that most variants won't help with improving at regular chess, so they ditch them.. 960 is Great for sharpening tactics & perfect for entry level players.

It's hard to find stats on variants but I did just see that Magnus is spearheading a new 'freestyle' tour www.nasdaq.com/articles/chess-carlsen-launches-freestyle-tour-india-first-on-list

@Sarg0n said in #4:
> Yeah, people simply don’t like it. Some random movements on a checkered board. Horde, dafuq?
>
> We‘ve all been waiting for the 960 boom (for 15 years or so). It’s cooommming! Not. Still a one-digit percentage, in the otb world de facto non-existing.

Chess960 players are here, ready to play. Alas, there are very few good over-the-board tournaments. The Chess960 community lacks sponsors and organizers, not players. Whenever an event with a nice prize fund and enough publicity takes place, many titled players play there. But those occasions are very rare.
By the way, horde is a very interesting strategic play, but it is very easy to throw a game away with a natural-looking move very early on. Also there have been many bots playing recently. In standard chess we have many OTB tournaments and ratings, so we more or less know who is who, at least from the 2300-level above. In many variants it is much harder to detect the discrepancy between the real strength and player's results. (
Personally I like standard chess and Chess960 much more than variants (Chess960 is not a variant in my eyes, rather standard chess with non-standard openings), but they have their right to exist. The fact that we do not like something does not imply that other people should not play it, either.