BS story, but there are indeed issues. I’ve got a 2 and 3 year old myself, and speaking from experience, it’s a mess that’ll put me in the red until my 3yo is 5, eating into my savings.

As mentioned, private is still the primary option for kids under 4 but we even have a lovely local program that can start at 3 if you’re poor enough (and in CA, that’s around 100k/yr lol). The problem is the time. They’re like 3 hour programs, some full time that’s still only 6 hour. With two working parents with minimal family support, that’s still a non starter if they can’t stay past 3pm.

At least my private daycare is cheap-ish at the cost of religious brainwashing, and that hasn’t seemed to matter for a kid like mine. Standards still keep them from, y’know, beating kids and whatnot.

Many locations had it but I’m unsure just how much was state, and even then, they usually had poverty requirements. After all, I’m a recipient and that was over three decades ago. Iirc, that was majority federal funded.

You’re looking at a mix of local, state and federal funding, and an expansion at the state level is big for less rich parts of CA, like Bakersfield and Fresno.

The article is bunk, but oddly enough the all time high by Steamdb suggests it’s around tied with DST, Megabonk, Hades II, and a few others at 115k-ish.

Nightreign, as AAA go, 313k at peak, lol.

You can still tell the article is bunk for comparing it to Stray as a cat game. Oh yeah, sure, while we’re at it let’s compare to Hello Kitty Island players, eh? AI logic. Lol

The article is talking about concurrent play, which generally peaks near release for all genres, with a few exceptions (like Hollow Knights sleeper numbers). Isaac came out when there was relatively fewer players and it’s a slow growth, so the original probably didn’t have a very high concurrent count.

The remake is around 70k peak, although it’s oddly high at 20k right now, perhaps because if Mewgenics.