Browser games f2p saturation?

Readers who follow the industry know that Bigpoint recently lost some of their talented managers. Readers with detail knowledge also might know that Travian lost their CEO with the original founders moving back in, merging their Travian Games with Travian Publishing.

So what is happening? Is this the first sign of saturation? It can't be denied that the amount of free to play content has increased 10 fold over the last years. As the games industry finally accepted the concept the number of titles being released is staggering. This means competition is much higher, choice is manifold so users leave games more easily for new experiences.

You can see some effects of this by using google trends (I love this tool): Seafight. Dark Orbit, Drakensang Online and Pirate Storm, all Bigpoint:

Since beginning of 2012 there is a huge downwards trend in Bigpoints' key titles while their new ones didn't catch up yep (Note: Farmerama and SG not mentioned). Interesting to see that Bigpoint tries to find a replacement for the troubled Seafight with Pirate Storm or Kultan - why else would they release two similar pirate games at once.

Let's trend some strategy titles Travian vs. Grepolis vs. Ikariam and OGame:

It seems that the downwards trend started sooner on this genre. 2009 generally was a year where a lot of games has been hit (see first chart - Seafight).

What happened 2009? What happened begining of 2012? I am into this and very curious.

Let's discuss!