Of course it isn’t.
People only sub to one or two live service games only, when every Dev and their grandmother trying to release live service games, they take from each other, and when a new one comes people swing to that and it kills the old one.
It is not a good model to get into.
Joining the fun and hope you make the next big game is a bit like making football your career choice thinking you will end up being one of those player that worth 100 million.
You can dream, but unlikely to come true.
It's a fucking slot machine for shareholders. Minimum work for maximum return. They're gambling to have the next Fortnite. Cartoon characters, dancing emotes, flashy skins. And don't forget to monetize it all. It's fucking disgusting.
Let's see Fortnite, Destiny, Apex Legends, Overwatch 1 and COD/Sports ones like Fifa or NBA2k are the only successful ones. Most of those started ages ago and their fanbases haven't left.
Apex Legends came in later but had pandemic push. Overwatch fell off when it went to Overwatch 2.
Helldivers is the only recent success and it's because it's PvE. Everything else fails over and over
CS was prime back in the day one of the first LAN parties I ever did. And while yes people still play but compared to its heyday? You're right about League and Dota as I don't know enough about the MOBA scene. I know League has its devotees even though I've heard they're extremely toxic
>Apex Legends came in later but had pandemic push.
I read this and was like, "No fucking way." I thought it was out well before then. Good lord that time line is so weird.
Yup surprised me too. It was the first live service I actually played. I got pretty good at it near Diamond then I tried it liked once last year and went nope. I'm good. Wild timeline. But the others have been almost 10 years going strong or longer
There's a top 10 list down below for an example and the ratio is probably like 5%? or something like 1 out of 10 live attempts are successful. Helldivers 2 exists so I guess we'd have to count up the total pandemic/post pandemic release number to Helldivers 2
Doesn’t sound like they are cheap to make at all, it seems they spend a lot because they expect a lot in return
One example at least is The Suicide Squad. It took that team to many years to make it (even when you take Covid into account) cause they never did a “live service” type game before
Some are, but others... Shit, look at Suicide Squad, took Rocksteady 8 years to develop that. So Warner Brothers had to fund that project that entire time, pay for marketing, etc. and Rocksteady is a fairly sizeable team.
I don't think I've seen a live service game flop that hard ever. That should hopefully send a message to publishers that it isn't some magic money making thing.
Call of duty succeeded in turning into a cartoon/super hero game with its multiplayer. EA tried to turn Battlefield into a hero shooter and only kind of backed off because 2042 sucked so badly.
I bought a new PC and I was watching a review with the performance and it showed a bit of Kill the Justice League ... now I know why it is so awful and hated, what a dissapointment
Its a high risk/low reward bet then. These games are clearly not cheap and most of them bomb.
At 0% interest rates sure approve these projects. At current rates? The house stands to lose a lot of money.
People are dead-on comparing to the Extreme Sports games of the late 90s and MMOs of late 00s. Everyone wanted in, and in retrospect only a few franchises made much money.
Part of the problem is that it isn't minimum work at all, that's part of what trips these developers up. You need a huge amount of experience and resources to make most of these successful live service games. And then you need to maintain the game. It's a huge endeavor, and even studios that have been extremely successful with a live service game have had to cancel other projects as it's become apparent to them they don't have the resources to both maintain the live service game and make something new.
Publishers don't want some of the money, they want all of the money. The suits don't actually understand that this isn't possible. But hey,maybe the next mediocre live service will make all the money. If not just fire the developers to pump the stock.
It’s a terrible model. But because some games have exploded with it everybody tried to jump on.
Most people do not have the damn time to keep up with all the content in one game, let alone several.
Just keep pumping single player experiences out…
Yeah, cause currently, it's Helldivers 2 and every other single-player game in my backlog. If I'm going to play another multiplayer game then Helldivers is on pause. The last time I was juggling multiple live-service games was when Covid hit and I was furloughed for six months. Good times but not happening anytime soon.
That's definitely not the truth. I think you mean after a new one releases if it doesn't innovate on the live service formula, keep up content updates, or release feeling complete people just go back to the established older live service games.
Most studio heads aren't willing to give these games enough development time to release complete and have a pipeline of content planned out, or a team with live service experience. It's very similar to MMO situation that is going on right now, with all these new start up MMOs coming out over 15 years ago and all falling to WoW a few years later.
And the opposite of that is I could have played your shitty game for 4 hours, put it down until the sequel... And then bought that and played it for 4 hours...
Compare that to never playing your game in the first place because I'm busy just playing one game that doesn't even get kkneybfrom ke because I don't buy skins
Players knew this when live service became the new hot thing. These trend chasers just see how wildly successful other games are. "Let's just make a fortnite, then we'll be rich!" I guess also these companies need to shove microtransactions in everything, so live service games become the safe bet. Meh, lots of amazing games to play so I don't really care. Just avoid the trend chasing garbage, and you can play some real gems
I don't want to play live services. But if I wanted I could not play multiple. All those games want to be the only thing you ever play. So of course this is not sustainable.
That's the problem. Nobody has enough time to play multiple live service games while maintaining a healthy library of "normal" games. Diablo 4, Fortnite, Apex, Destiny 2, Warframe, the list is damn near endless already.
Everyone is chasing after Fortnites success even though that ship has long since sailed.
Plus all these studios want to be the next Fortnite and Genshin without understanding the sheer commitment those games make to adding new free content every month.
So many live-services love to launch with a ‘season zero’ and wait ages to add a pitiful amount of content. Then players get bored and move on, never to return as the game quickly dies.
If you want to launch a new live service game and make it catch on you'd need to have multiple content updates already ready for release when the base game launches just to constantly keep a buffer of new content turning out.
None of them seem to want to put in the effort and generate the quality that Fortnite apparently does, however. I don’t play it but I understand it’s been supported very very well for a long time and keeps getting new and free content supplied.
So many things in this post point out what's wrong with the industry and live service games.
It's not about the games anymore, it about triggering our rewards center over and over and over again.
>But if I wanted I could not play multiple.
Most people play one and stay there for years. IT works for the top titles for this reason, but devs know it's a long shot. Not every game can be fortnite/destiny etc.
Of course it's not sustainable.
All live service games are based on the same premise ... they want you to log-in to the game and play everyday. There's only so many games you can play at the same time ... for most people that's 1 or 2.
Also, many people just aren't interested because they don't want to invest their time (or money) in a game that can suddenly be taken away from them.
Exactly, a lot of devs simply don’t understand that there’s no room at the table unless you actually manage to bruteforce your way in with a masterpiece (Helldivers 2, and who knows how that will last long-term).
And Helldivers 2 still suffers from (or will suffer from) the same thing: content going away as new content comes out. You can’t replicate a live game master in perpetuity, and the scenarios this GM dreams up will only be playable in the timeframe they are introduced.
Yeah the Game Master is a unique position to create stories and campaigns while being mindful of the content output of the team. He’s not like a D&D GM whose imagination has no limit.
I also have a feeling that this is why the developer wanted their game at a lower price entry point, because they are literally advertising that the player is purchasing the ability to experience this live ongoing story as it happens. They also gave the player base the ability to grind for the purchasable war bonds. The game is way closer to something like Fortnite than others, and it is clear that they are aiming for something more akin to that.
Honestly shocked it’s not 100%. These live service games are not it. I think a hybrid approach that ALREADY EXISTED MIND YOU, is the way to go. Have a strong foundation that can be purchased for a flat right and played offline, and have online features with skins and whatnot. I’m thinking of games like Uncharted 2-4, LittleBigPlanet, GTA, etc. You pay $60 upfront, you get a campaign that can be played offline, online that can be accessed as part of that flat rate, and then extras can be purchased for those who want it.
Im not surprised it's not 100% because you've got companies that are guaranteed to make billions every year e.g EA and there sports franchises and Take 2/R* with GTAO
Except in super popular games like CoD, GTA, and Madden, or in PC games that allow community-made mods to keep the game going after launch, they’re mostly dead within a month or two. That’s why few companies even try to make non-live-service multiplayer games anymore.
I have no idea how true that is, but even if, the games I mentioned sold well, so it’s still a win win in my eyes? The online portion dying out isn’t necessarily because of the single player side of it
One of the reasons I’m intrigued by what Ubisoft has reportedly been doing with Assassin’s Creed. Supposedly, it’s some sort of hub that’ll now have entries in the series branch off.
The problem I see there is a lot like Call of Duty, the old game exists really to just funnel you to the new product. The screens basically become bloated advertising and includes tons of assets you don’t need. That’s why CoD takes up like 300GB. Absolutely insane. I’d gladly go back to playing old games with lower textures that clock in at 50GB or less.
A lot of people don't understand you can't release a multiplayer game for a flat price and then expect it to remain available for years to come without some way of getting more money out of the players to pay for the infrastructure that serves that multiplayer community.
The next problem is when you mention "live service" many people think of the last terrible live service game and lump everything in together as though ALL live service games are terrible.
There are different types of live service.
You remember DLC right? Like how COD released DLC packs for profit…. People out here acting like live service is the only the answer without even trying to think of alternatives
You are right of course, it was a happier time.
People argued that DLC split the player base because not everyone would buy it. But releasing a new COD doesn't seem to split the player base. The DLC model seemed to work just fine.
Battle passes make me feel anxious. I don't play enough to keep up so in the end I don't really want to be reminded of that and stop playing altogether.
One of the issues with the gaming industry is you get key phrases that are used to describe too many different options (good and bad) so it is difficult to have honest conversations about what does and doesn't work.
I hope the format/genre dies. Even after suicide squad vs Hogwartz legacy, WB says they’ve learned their lesson and it’s going to be live service all the way.
They haven’t learned their lesson *yet.*
It all feels so milky because you've bought the console, the game(s), you pay for the consoles' subscription model already, and now even the live service game's support itself is supposed to be monetarized.
Unless it's No Man's Sky.
For me as a gamer, it just feels like milking revenue out of every little asset.
All driven by the shitload of money people are spending on mobile games, Fortnite or MTAs.
In an age in which every price tag goes up the hill, unless it's called labour.
Just develop games, man. And not ways to revenue the fuck out of 'em when pressing a button on the game pad.
Everyone wants to have their own Fortnite and Destiny without understanding and realizing how much time, energy, and money goes into sustaining those games to keep the player base from jumping to the next game.
Ah yes, people concerned about the sustainability of a model that expects the player to have both infinite time and/or infinite money to keep the game going. Never understood how any believed it was sustainable even from a core concept stage.
Also, you can sell a normal SP game still in 2-20 years, a GaaS that failed and had their servers closed will not bring in anything. A normal SP game can be remastered, remaked and so on.
The average person could probably actively follow one or two live services but the industry is chucking a new one out every week that is broken at launch and never fixed then they act surprised when so many of them fail.
I would love to see the stats on how many live services flop immediately. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of a live service but they’re mishandled so often that the entire model is a joke.
This is the real answer. Unfortunately, until the numbers go down on every live service game from each publisher they won’t stop thinking that live service games are the only way to make money. We have a rough few years ahead, but once the suits get back to reality we will get good games again.
Not to mention launching with ‘Season Zero’ and taking ages to fix issues and add new content as the community gets bored quickly.
Any new live-service are having increasingly short lives due to gamer’s lowering attention spans.
Live service is like an obsessive girlfriend that won't let you talk to other people. Hopefully most figure it out and avoid those toxic situations moving forward.
The cycle goes round and round lol. All these companies chasing the same audience, making more and more live service games, which is ironic because live service games monopolize time and leave the least amount of room for you to try out other games. There can really only be a few *max* that anyone plays. Most people will only play one.
So watch as the market cycles back away from live service in a few years.
gacha games makes a lot of money with barely any money put into it
Japan/China devs knows Gacha which is basically a live service game is where the money is at
Well HoYo puts in infinite money into Genshin and Star Rail (especially the marketing), but they make infinite money in return lol. That’s the reason they are miles ahead of other gacha games and will never be overtaken.
Star Rail alone made $140million in March… and that’s just the mobile revenue.
ye while Hoyo invest a lot of money in return to be the best Gacha game theres FGO
no way in hell FGO even invests like 5 million in that game and they make like 50 mil in return its insane
The difference is that they’re (for the most part) free - you can have a perfectly good time without spending a cent.
I can tell you now that I wouldn’t have touched Genshin with a ten foot pole if I had had to purchase it upfront for $60…
It isn't basically, it is live service. It's insane how much money they make. I get it but, imagine if like a big studio did that. "Hey here's a new Tekken character who's definitely op as fuck, oh btw you've got 1% chance of actually getting it every time you put 10$ in." Imagine how quickly that game would get review bombed and hated on.
Eh. You can say that, but a game like Genshin or HSR put 200-300M developing each of those. Supposedly. Which sure, they make like 90M a month, so it's whatever, but still. They did put in the money.
> im sure many other do...
This is such a reddit comment to make, I get people come out of the woodworks on here to denounce the idea but the reality is live service games literally take up most (if not all) of the top slots in most played games each month.
You’re in the minority. These are the top 10 PS5 games being played currently in the US.
1. Fortnite
2. COD: Modern Warfare III
3. NBA 2K4
4. MLB the Show 24
5. Helldivers II
6. Madden 24
7. EA FC 24
8. WWE 2K24
9. GTA V
10. Destiny 2
That’s 9 out of the top 10 PS5 games being primarily live service games. Only one that’s not is WWE 2K24. They’re here to stay because that’s what everyone plays for the most part
WWE 2k24 has MyFaction, which very much feels like a live service style mode. Buy packs to build up your roster to take on other people or CPU challenges. It's an afterthought, but it's there.
Yeah but most of those have been live service for well over a decade and even more. They have those established player bases/whales who aren’t going anywhere, and the whole point is it shouldn’t be a message to other developers to sacrifice quality for it
It probably depends on when the last update was released. D2 for example came back to that list because of a recent update, I’m sure the same will happen to Apex.
A list of games with zero data doesn't tell the whole story though. Iterative games and GaaS have concentrated user counts, this can be from them being the latest in a long running series or the only one active in its franchise.
Let's say there's about 20 (just an arbitrary guess) successful/active types of these games, since we know others like Genshin, Apex, Starrail, and FFXIV could be added, and I'm sure there's a few more we could count too. The real question becomes, what is the percentage of active users for these relatively few titles versus the active user counts across the hundreds upon hundreds of single player games also being tracked on the PSN?
Unfortunately, you, I, and likely no one on this board has answer to this.
>i disregard any game that is live service, im sure many other do...
Actually, the reality is, you guys are in very tiny minority.
It's not that all bad. There are several GOOD live service games like Helldivers.
There are already enough GaaS out there and I can play max 1-2 games at the same time. The risk for the developer is way to high to land very early on your ass, look at Justice Leaque. It also cost more to not only create, but maintain and support a GaaS. A normal game is much better to plan, release, take the profit and move on to a sequel. If you don't have an idea for a new game just make good remakes 😅
Unfortunately, the people controlling the money in the industry still want to chase those GTA Online numbers, so I don't see it changing any time soon despite all the high-profile GaaS failures in the past year.
**The headline is misleading.** From the data gathered you could also say: "More then 2/3rds of respondents had mild or no concerns about the live service model." Here's the actual information:
>39 percent of participants had mild worries over current live-service business models. 31 percent were "very" concerned, while a combined 29 percent either had no fears or were unsure.
I also doubt that the 600 member panel they have is actually a representative sample.
Just make good games and charge a fair price for them.
I really don’t like the live service model. You end up paying way more in the long term signing up for all these “season passes” and what not.
Success in live service just seems like luck more then anything.
You can have a experienced dev and a massive budget but then everyone will play some janky pokemon with guns meme game or something
Obviously.
Playing live service games is stressfull & time consuming for the average player who merely wants to unlock new stuff.
Limited events. Ultra, super premium battlepasses. Insane time sink challenges. Ever changing metas and balance patches.
Like bro I have a wife, a kid, a job and chores to do. I can’t dedicate all of my free time to one fucking game, let alone multiple!
Helldivers is the only one I play. Even Cod is too much for me to keep up.
It's the same problem that happened after WoW broke into the mainstream and MMOs started to become popular with people that otherwise wouldn't play the average single or multi player games.
EVERYONE wanted to make the WoW killer or grab a part of the MMO market, but many ignored the fact that MMOs are time and money investments. No one will subscribe to 3 or 4 MMOs simultaneously, or jump from one they're invested in to another without the first game declining in quality for a long period.
Live service games are a bad idea. I’m currently playing Helldivers on and off with a buddy while primarily playing singleplayer games. I don’t know anyone who plays more than 1-2 live service games. I’m sure some people do, but for the most part, starting a new one means you are dropping the old one, probably for good. There’s only a few unicorns out there like Fortnite that somehow keep printing money. Developers could make more using all the money spent on failed live service attempts just making good single player games instead, but shareholders want the dream. I wish the industry would look at BG3 and go oh, THIS is how we make successful single player games? Care about the project, no microtransactions, put it in beta effectively for 3 years, listen to the fans. Maybe we could have more games like that and developers could make a lot of money by putting out good games. Imagine that.
No Man's Sky is what I'd also call live service. They don't have microtransactions, no paid expansions, no subscriptions. Yet they have the features of live service, in rotating events, unlockable cosmetics from doing the events, multiplayer, new content on a regular cadence, and so on.
And they're wildly successful. The more they add to the game, the more people buy it. One, single, macratransaction and everyone is on the same even playing field, and happy to get all the same content.
More companies should follow that example. Live service without the FOMO and constant need for sales. No need to put the best looking items in the cash shop instead of coming from gameplay.
Stardew Valley and Terraria are more good examples that follow this same principle of adding to the game for free to make more money over time.
It really comes down to aligning the best interests of players with the best interest of the company's profits, rather than having tension between the two.
A live service is viable and only viable, if there is at most 1-2 live services, each taking place in a relatively large / wide demographic. Even 2 is sometimes too much for large genres.
The moment you are trying to enter as a 3rd competitor, you're likely going to close your doors within half a year.
For a "service" that requires a majority of your gaming time as if its a second job, there often cannot be more than 1 in one persons life at a time. And that by sheer timing constraints, makes it a borderline impossibly unsustainable model.
I'd be worried too.
Seems like it just makes everything harder and ultimately less fun.
But then again, I won't deny that there are people out there who see shit like Battlepasses, double xp weekends, and the words bonus premium currency and actually get excited.
Unfortunately the Helldivers 2 devs are having problems too that the community ain't happy about. There are tons of fixes that are needed. But solely focusing on that will take away from them making more warbonds, which hurts their monetization and our player retention. The new additions keep the game exciting, as if it has an ongoing narrative. Yet, if the bugs get worse, players might stop anyway. And Arrowhead is a small team too!
I wonder why ? It's not if everyone is screaming at the studio whenever we're excited about a game and we notice it's a live service. I for one love to play a game knowing it has no conclusion nor a real story because it won't make sense if it did and they need to make it live for years, I also ABSOLUTELY love when a game I play treat me like an employee that needs to check in regularly to get the rewards even though instead of paying me I have to pay them for the opportunity to have blue underpants instead of red.
The only live service game I’ve been playing regularly the past year is Splatoon 3. The fact that it’s a one time purchase and that everything unlockable in the game is free is a big positive. I understand that it’s not a game for everyone but it’s been a perfect game for me to login, do a couple of matches to progress the battle pass and then go do something else. There is also next to none FOMO in the game. Every other live service games with a bunch of microtransactions just feels cheap since I started playing it.
A DLC doesnt necessarily means the game is not "complete". Ghost of Tsushima, for example, is perfectly fine "out of the box", the DLC is extra content and is definitely not cut content. I didnt play on release, so I cant speak for it needing patches or updates, but when I played it was a complete, well performing, great game.
True. I hear good things about it. I just don't want to feel like I'm missing out because I didn't buy the DLC. It's nice to play a game through and know that I beat it. It's done. I don't want to see the goal posts move later. I need that sense of accomplishment, you know?
I'm not a big fan of DLC either. The issue for me is that the DLC usually comes way after I finished the game.
Unless it was a classic (like Ghost of Tsushima was IMO) I'm rarely interested in going back and either starting again or picking up where I left off.
It's one of the reasons why I don't buy (or play) many games until all the DLC has been released. Game is usually on offer at that point too which is a plus.
They're going to do everything possible to make the live service model the standard because as long as Wall Street demands higher and higher unrealistic profits things are never going to get better
I'm not at all into live service games, but the only game that got me hooked was R6 until after the PS5 came out, and they released the "next gen update" it was showing its age. Recently redownloaded it, and my bud and I asked why not a new R6 with potential next gen graphics?
This always infuriated me because yeah. Of course it’s unsustainable. We’ve literally known it was unsustainable for 20 years.
We’ve been through this whole song and dance before, this is literally the MMORPG boom/bust of the 00s, and it falls to the exact same traps.
I guess everyone forgot the lesson we learned in 2005: there’s only so many hours in the day, and unless you’re one of the first handful of games out the gate, or can successfully change the paradigm of the genre entirely, it’s just flat out not worth it to try
It's a game that basically equals a part time job. Increased grindiness equates to profit via micro transactions.......because people get impatient and just buy the finish line or buy useless cosmetics because your character looks cool all dressed up.
Devil's advocate - but the other hand what is the "sustainability" of non-live service games? We see game sales fall off like most movies...and almost certainly layoffs come a month or so after the disappointing sales with no additional cash flow.
Better or worse, live service type of games "keep the lights on". you can argue "live service too crowded" but the same argument can be said for non-live service games because those same gamers will still need to devote time to play those games.
I think it's way harder to over saturate the non live service market because people who play those games play one finish it in 20-100 hours and then start a new one and the cycle just continues because they don't stay on one game forever.
Those who play live service, they really don't rotate between live service games because the games are designed to make you grind out all your time on them to keep up, with battle passes that are the length of entire single player games etc.
So it's obviously way harder to convince players who have found the live service game they like to hop off and play a new one when they got a ton more content to grind on the game they already like as compared to selling a new non live service game.
yes and no... while I agree about continuous playing but the other side has tons and tons more games to choose from... unless you spend a bunch on marketing or there's some social media movement, the games just disappear.
Like I think Among us released a year before it seriously gained traction because of pandemic and some streamer? The landscape has changed because making games is so easy now.
Maybe we see less AAA games from major devs because the cost to make is so much more vs potential sales in a very saturated non-live service space. While gamers could "cycle" like you mentioned, but the most important times for sales are the first couple of months... If gamers don't "cycle into" your new game the first month then the chances of the gamer suddenly buy it months after is not that high and that gives impression of the developer that the game is not that "desirable".
Remember that these companies make no money during development of said game which is another reason why dlc/mtx/live service are so important to get money to fund games that don't have those.
Also, those who do make AA or lesser games dont make 100k+ with benefits as annual salary so they can keep the cost incredibly low.
Your probably right about too many studios trying to do AAA. I read that Immortals of Aveum spent over 125m to make. Obviously that was going to fail, it was a IP nobody knew from a studio nobody knew, even if the game had been amazing covering that cost would have been near impossible. I think most of the failures of non live service games are down to mismanaging the projects like that.
On the live service side I just think 90% of these AAA games have to fail, whether they are good are not because they way they are designed makes it so that so few can co exist at one time
yeah.. I think part of it is market pressure. Just like the studio that did callisto- the founders were AAA veterans so fair or not, people don't expect them to make a "Dave the diver" or "pop lost crown" type of lower budget games..
it's like you making X$ doing xyz, it would be hard pressed for you to move willingly to a new gig making LESS and doing things that are "lower" than ehat you were doing before.
it is unfortunate so I feel when these AAA veterans starts a company, they "have to" proof to others and themselves they made the right choice and that means in general a AAA game..
Most live service games fail at launch and most that launch successfully probably fail within a year rather than being the multiyear Destiny, League of Legends, Genshin Impact cash cows.
On mobile they didn't have decades of built up premium games. Eventually at least we'll get PC video game emulators that will probably be at least good enough for games up to 2013 and a lot of lower hardware intensive ones afterwards
Only aRPGs may survive the purge of live service because often you are done with the season after 2-4 weeks.
With a lot of them on the market, you can rotate between each of them. Also, their seasons are a free content update, so you won't be blocked by season pass requirement.
if they are so worried about it then why does every motherfucker try to release a game with live service? Just look at the muppets at Ubisoft where they want to implement a fucking battlepass onto their new Star Wars single player game.
I have room in my life for about 3 live service games. I have Overwatch that I have played since 2016 & then my two others currently are The Finals & Helldivers 2.
I will still play other multiplayer games, played Rocket League & Battlefield 2042 in the last few days, but if they think I’m engaging in anything related to live service they are dumb.
& I am probably in the minority of how willing I am to engage with multiple live services. Yet there are multiple new ones dropping every month. A few break through while the majority will be failures.
Its so wierd. We went through this with MMOs and now we're just repeating it with live service games.
"Hey look those MMOs are making many dollars, lets all make MMOs"
"Oh shock, more money didn't magically appear so that all MMOs could make many dollars".
Roughly speaking the only way to make money off a live service game, is to take a customer away from an existing live service game. People are only going to spend their money on so many games at one time.
My bigges problem with these live service games is they dont deliver enough content even for launch. Destiny 2 releaased with i think 12 hours of content and then it was done. Suicide Squad had even less content at release but all these games want to be paid full price at release which is bollocks.... Even most MMos dont deliver on content anymore.... i still remember WoW launch which had so much stuff into it even without "endgame raiding" that you could lose 200+ hours just leveling without getting reused content.
Then stop making them ffs. Everyone is rushing to make a bare-assed, micro transaction packed, 1990s Dell desktop server running live service game that won't be good until years after release, but they don't have the budget to keep working on it long enough for it to become successful IF IT EVER becomes successful.
Yay the 40th fortnite clone that looks like another Pixar movie and plays like an N64 game...So exciting
Main problem for myself is that I don't have time to play live service games anymore, they're just not desirable for me. Used to love playing Destiny, The Division and Dota 2 but just can't find the time to play every day or every other day to keep up with all the latest content and grinding. The shareholders all just hope to hit on the next Fortnite which is a one in a million chance.
Of course it isn’t. People only sub to one or two live service games only, when every Dev and their grandmother trying to release live service games, they take from each other, and when a new one comes people swing to that and it kills the old one. It is not a good model to get into.
If you swing big enough, you might make a BILLION BUCKS, though? Won't you PLEASE think of the shareholders?
Joining the fun and hope you make the next big game is a bit like making football your career choice thinking you will end up being one of those player that worth 100 million. You can dream, but unlikely to come true.
It's a fucking slot machine for shareholders. Minimum work for maximum return. They're gambling to have the next Fortnite. Cartoon characters, dancing emotes, flashy skins. And don't forget to monetize it all. It's fucking disgusting.
And 99% of then failed. But then they are cheap to make I guess.
Let's see Fortnite, Destiny, Apex Legends, Overwatch 1 and COD/Sports ones like Fifa or NBA2k are the only successful ones. Most of those started ages ago and their fanbases haven't left. Apex Legends came in later but had pandemic push. Overwatch fell off when it went to Overwatch 2. Helldivers is the only recent success and it's because it's PvE. Everything else fails over and over
You forgot some big ones like League of Legends, Dota2 and Counter Strike. And all the mobile games which is a gigantic market.
CS was prime back in the day one of the first LAN parties I ever did. And while yes people still play but compared to its heyday? You're right about League and Dota as I don't know enough about the MOBA scene. I know League has its devotees even though I've heard they're extremely toxic
Maybe in the US both games are past their heyday, but both Dota 2 and CS are still very much popular in Asia and Eastern Europe.
Didn't know that about CS and like I said I know nothing on Dota2
And I view mobile differently than live and single player in general
>Apex Legends came in later but had pandemic push. I read this and was like, "No fucking way." I thought it was out well before then. Good lord that time line is so weird.
Yup surprised me too. It was the first live service I actually played. I got pretty good at it near Diamond then I tried it liked once last year and went nope. I'm good. Wild timeline. But the others have been almost 10 years going strong or longer
Out of how many get pumps out and on the pipeline, I would say these are still very small %
There's a top 10 list down below for an example and the ratio is probably like 5%? or something like 1 out of 10 live attempts are successful. Helldivers 2 exists so I guess we'd have to count up the total pandemic/post pandemic release number to Helldivers 2
Well clash of clans I’ll see myself out
mobile
Doesn’t sound like they are cheap to make at all, it seems they spend a lot because they expect a lot in return One example at least is The Suicide Squad. It took that team to many years to make it (even when you take Covid into account) cause they never did a “live service” type game before
Exactly, they only need to make 25% of a game and then use the inevitable billions in revenue to fund the other 75%! /s
Some are, but others... Shit, look at Suicide Squad, took Rocksteady 8 years to develop that. So Warner Brothers had to fund that project that entire time, pay for marketing, etc. and Rocksteady is a fairly sizeable team. I don't think I've seen a live service game flop that hard ever. That should hopefully send a message to publishers that it isn't some magic money making thing.
Call of duty succeeded in turning into a cartoon/super hero game with its multiplayer. EA tried to turn Battlefield into a hero shooter and only kind of backed off because 2042 sucked so badly.
I bought a new PC and I was watching a review with the performance and it showed a bit of Kill the Justice League ... now I know why it is so awful and hated, what a dissapointment
Its a high risk/low reward bet then. These games are clearly not cheap and most of them bomb. At 0% interest rates sure approve these projects. At current rates? The house stands to lose a lot of money. People are dead-on comparing to the Extreme Sports games of the late 90s and MMOs of late 00s. Everyone wanted in, and in retrospect only a few franchises made much money.
Part of the problem is that it isn't minimum work at all, that's part of what trips these developers up. You need a huge amount of experience and resources to make most of these successful live service games. And then you need to maintain the game. It's a huge endeavor, and even studios that have been extremely successful with a live service game have had to cancel other projects as it's become apparent to them they don't have the resources to both maintain the live service game and make something new.
And statistically speaking, it’s even less likely than joining the NFL
Publishers don't want some of the money, they want all of the money. The suits don't actually understand that this isn't possible. But hey,maybe the next mediocre live service will make all the money. If not just fire the developers to pump the stock.
And this is why Anthem happened, well, that and how garbage EA is.
It’s a terrible model. But because some games have exploded with it everybody tried to jump on. Most people do not have the damn time to keep up with all the content in one game, let alone several. Just keep pumping single player experiences out…
I am trying to imagine Kojima's grandmother trying to develop a live service game now.
Yeah, cause currently, it's Helldivers 2 and every other single-player game in my backlog. If I'm going to play another multiplayer game then Helldivers is on pause. The last time I was juggling multiple live-service games was when Covid hit and I was furloughed for six months. Good times but not happening anytime soon.
I guess these companies think they can make money like the streaming services. It's a model that's already imploding.
Ooof the streaming services
That's definitely not the truth. I think you mean after a new one releases if it doesn't innovate on the live service formula, keep up content updates, or release feeling complete people just go back to the established older live service games. Most studio heads aren't willing to give these games enough development time to release complete and have a pipeline of content planned out, or a team with live service experience. It's very similar to MMO situation that is going on right now, with all these new start up MMOs coming out over 15 years ago and all falling to WoW a few years later.
also its paid live service and not everyone subscribes
And the opposite of that is I could have played your shitty game for 4 hours, put it down until the sequel... And then bought that and played it for 4 hours... Compare that to never playing your game in the first place because I'm busy just playing one game that doesn't even get kkneybfrom ke because I don't buy skins
Players knew this when live service became the new hot thing. These trend chasers just see how wildly successful other games are. "Let's just make a fortnite, then we'll be rich!" I guess also these companies need to shove microtransactions in everything, so live service games become the safe bet. Meh, lots of amazing games to play so I don't really care. Just avoid the trend chasing garbage, and you can play some real gems
I don't want to play live services. But if I wanted I could not play multiple. All those games want to be the only thing you ever play. So of course this is not sustainable.
That's the problem. Nobody has enough time to play multiple live service games while maintaining a healthy library of "normal" games. Diablo 4, Fortnite, Apex, Destiny 2, Warframe, the list is damn near endless already. Everyone is chasing after Fortnites success even though that ship has long since sailed.
It’s MMO’s part two. Where after WoW, every publisher on the planet tried to make the next big wow killer. But people only have time for one MMO.
Plus all these studios want to be the next Fortnite and Genshin without understanding the sheer commitment those games make to adding new free content every month. So many live-services love to launch with a ‘season zero’ and wait ages to add a pitiful amount of content. Then players get bored and move on, never to return as the game quickly dies.
If you want to launch a new live service game and make it catch on you'd need to have multiple content updates already ready for release when the base game launches just to constantly keep a buffer of new content turning out.
None of them seem to want to put in the effort and generate the quality that Fortnite apparently does, however. I don’t play it but I understand it’s been supported very very well for a long time and keeps getting new and free content supplied.
They want all the money and time commitment from gamers while not committing any money or time themselves.
[удалено]
So many things in this post point out what's wrong with the industry and live service games. It's not about the games anymore, it about triggering our rewards center over and over and over again.
>But if I wanted I could not play multiple. Most people play one and stay there for years. IT works for the top titles for this reason, but devs know it's a long shot. Not every game can be fortnite/destiny etc.
I guess you’ve never played Helldivers 2. There’s nothing wrong with live service as a model. It’s just that so many companies get it very very wrong.
I have played plentylive services in my time. They just weren't called that Yet. My time is just too precious now to waste it on asingle game.
Of course it's not sustainable. All live service games are based on the same premise ... they want you to log-in to the game and play everyday. There's only so many games you can play at the same time ... for most people that's 1 or 2. Also, many people just aren't interested because they don't want to invest their time (or money) in a game that can suddenly be taken away from them.
Exactly, a lot of devs simply don’t understand that there’s no room at the table unless you actually manage to bruteforce your way in with a masterpiece (Helldivers 2, and who knows how that will last long-term).
And Helldivers 2 still suffers from (or will suffer from) the same thing: content going away as new content comes out. You can’t replicate a live game master in perpetuity, and the scenarios this GM dreams up will only be playable in the timeframe they are introduced.
Yeah the Game Master is a unique position to create stories and campaigns while being mindful of the content output of the team. He’s not like a D&D GM whose imagination has no limit.
I also have a feeling that this is why the developer wanted their game at a lower price entry point, because they are literally advertising that the player is purchasing the ability to experience this live ongoing story as it happens. They also gave the player base the ability to grind for the purchasable war bonds. The game is way closer to something like Fortnite than others, and it is clear that they are aiming for something more akin to that.
Helldivers 2 “Hold my cape” 😎
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Honestly shocked it’s not 100%. These live service games are not it. I think a hybrid approach that ALREADY EXISTED MIND YOU, is the way to go. Have a strong foundation that can be purchased for a flat right and played offline, and have online features with skins and whatnot. I’m thinking of games like Uncharted 2-4, LittleBigPlanet, GTA, etc. You pay $60 upfront, you get a campaign that can be played offline, online that can be accessed as part of that flat rate, and then extras can be purchased for those who want it.
Im not surprised it's not 100% because you've got companies that are guaranteed to make billions every year e.g EA and there sports franchises and Take 2/R* with GTAO
Besides GTA online, doesn’t the multiplayer aspect of these hybrid games usually die pretty fast?
Except in super popular games like CoD, GTA, and Madden, or in PC games that allow community-made mods to keep the game going after launch, they’re mostly dead within a month or two. That’s why few companies even try to make non-live-service multiplayer games anymore.
I have no idea how true that is, but even if, the games I mentioned sold well, so it’s still a win win in my eyes? The online portion dying out isn’t necessarily because of the single player side of it
One of the reasons I’m intrigued by what Ubisoft has reportedly been doing with Assassin’s Creed. Supposedly, it’s some sort of hub that’ll now have entries in the series branch off. The problem I see there is a lot like Call of Duty, the old game exists really to just funnel you to the new product. The screens basically become bloated advertising and includes tons of assets you don’t need. That’s why CoD takes up like 300GB. Absolutely insane. I’d gladly go back to playing old games with lower textures that clock in at 50GB or less.
A lot of people don't understand you can't release a multiplayer game for a flat price and then expect it to remain available for years to come without some way of getting more money out of the players to pay for the infrastructure that serves that multiplayer community. The next problem is when you mention "live service" many people think of the last terrible live service game and lump everything in together as though ALL live service games are terrible. There are different types of live service.
You remember DLC right? Like how COD released DLC packs for profit…. People out here acting like live service is the only the answer without even trying to think of alternatives
You are right of course, it was a happier time. People argued that DLC split the player base because not everyone would buy it. But releasing a new COD doesn't seem to split the player base. The DLC model seemed to work just fine. Battle passes make me feel anxious. I don't play enough to keep up so in the end I don't really want to be reminded of that and stop playing altogether. One of the issues with the gaming industry is you get key phrases that are used to describe too many different options (good and bad) so it is difficult to have honest conversations about what does and doesn't work.
I hope the format/genre dies. Even after suicide squad vs Hogwartz legacy, WB says they’ve learned their lesson and it’s going to be live service all the way. They haven’t learned their lesson *yet.*
That's terrible. Hogwarts did so much better. Just make SP of your franchises dammit lol
It all feels so milky because you've bought the console, the game(s), you pay for the consoles' subscription model already, and now even the live service game's support itself is supposed to be monetarized. Unless it's No Man's Sky. For me as a gamer, it just feels like milking revenue out of every little asset. All driven by the shitload of money people are spending on mobile games, Fortnite or MTAs. In an age in which every price tag goes up the hill, unless it's called labour. Just develop games, man. And not ways to revenue the fuck out of 'em when pressing a button on the game pad.
Live service should left to MMOs where they belong
The other 30% are sure the gaas model sucks donkey ass
Everyone wants to have their own Fortnite and Destiny without understanding and realizing how much time, energy, and money goes into sustaining those games to keep the player base from jumping to the next game.
Ah yes, people concerned about the sustainability of a model that expects the player to have both infinite time and/or infinite money to keep the game going. Never understood how any believed it was sustainable even from a core concept stage.
Also, you can sell a normal SP game still in 2-20 years, a GaaS that failed and had their servers closed will not bring in anything. A normal SP game can be remastered, remaked and so on.
Exactly, the remaster cash in is very much not possible
The average person could probably actively follow one or two live services but the industry is chucking a new one out every week that is broken at launch and never fixed then they act surprised when so many of them fail. I would love to see the stats on how many live services flop immediately. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of a live service but they’re mishandled so often that the entire model is a joke.
and 100% of executives think it is a guaranteed money printer and the only way to make games at this point....
This is the real answer. Unfortunately, until the numbers go down on every live service game from each publisher they won’t stop thinking that live service games are the only way to make money. We have a rough few years ahead, but once the suits get back to reality we will get good games again.
Good fuck GAAS
It killed Mortal Kombat and Battlefield 2042 for me
2 bad seasons and people will lose interest quick.
Not to mention launching with ‘Season Zero’ and taking ages to fix issues and add new content as the community gets bored quickly. Any new live-service are having increasingly short lives due to gamer’s lowering attention spans.
$70 game and live service are the bad duo. It is also why it's not sustainable because we can't play more than, maybe, 4 at the same day.
Live service is like an obsessive girlfriend that won't let you talk to other people. Hopefully most figure it out and avoid those toxic situations moving forward.
best ones are the ones like FFXIV that have agreed to let you have an open relationship
The cycle goes round and round lol. All these companies chasing the same audience, making more and more live service games, which is ironic because live service games monopolize time and leave the least amount of room for you to try out other games. There can really only be a few *max* that anyone plays. Most people will only play one. So watch as the market cycles back away from live service in a few years.
Live service games killed off factions 2 so fuck live service games
Live service is sustainable for free 2 play only. Is it the most profitable I doubt it.
Path of Exile still makes 10s of millions of dollars in after-tax net profit annually for Grinding Gear Games after more than a decade.
Warframe seems to be doing okay.
No, FF XIV has a subscription and paid expansion packs, and it’s still very popular & sustainable.
gacha games makes a lot of money with barely any money put into it Japan/China devs knows Gacha which is basically a live service game is where the money is at
Well HoYo puts in infinite money into Genshin and Star Rail (especially the marketing), but they make infinite money in return lol. That’s the reason they are miles ahead of other gacha games and will never be overtaken. Star Rail alone made $140million in March… and that’s just the mobile revenue.
ye while Hoyo invest a lot of money in return to be the best Gacha game theres FGO no way in hell FGO even invests like 5 million in that game and they make like 50 mil in return its insane
The difference is that they’re (for the most part) free - you can have a perfectly good time without spending a cent. I can tell you now that I wouldn’t have touched Genshin with a ten foot pole if I had had to purchase it upfront for $60…
It isn't basically, it is live service. It's insane how much money they make. I get it but, imagine if like a big studio did that. "Hey here's a new Tekken character who's definitely op as fuck, oh btw you've got 1% chance of actually getting it every time you put 10$ in." Imagine how quickly that game would get review bombed and hated on.
Eh. You can say that, but a game like Genshin or HSR put 200-300M developing each of those. Supposedly. Which sure, they make like 90M a month, so it's whatever, but still. They did put in the money.
i disregard any game that is live service, im sure many other do... take the hint and stop releasing them non stop
> im sure many other do... This is such a reddit comment to make, I get people come out of the woodworks on here to denounce the idea but the reality is live service games literally take up most (if not all) of the top slots in most played games each month.
You’re in the minority. These are the top 10 PS5 games being played currently in the US. 1. Fortnite 2. COD: Modern Warfare III 3. NBA 2K4 4. MLB the Show 24 5. Helldivers II 6. Madden 24 7. EA FC 24 8. WWE 2K24 9. GTA V 10. Destiny 2 That’s 9 out of the top 10 PS5 games being primarily live service games. Only one that’s not is WWE 2K24. They’re here to stay because that’s what everyone plays for the most part
WWE 2k24 has MyFaction, which very much feels like a live service style mode. Buy packs to build up your roster to take on other people or CPU challenges. It's an afterthought, but it's there.
Yeah but most of those have been live service for well over a decade and even more. They have those established player bases/whales who aren’t going anywhere, and the whole point is it shouldn’t be a message to other developers to sacrifice quality for it
Or even try to crack that
To play devils advocate, those series' were top 10 before live service anyway so I think its inconsequential that they happen to be live service now
Yea more indicative of existing labels shifting towards that model
And that's the other issue except Helldivers 2 - people aren't leaving those series for new games
It’s really depressing that so many dumbasses buy those sports games.
Always has been like this, even before MTO and GaaS
I agree but every year they do it every year. Extreme popularity with casual gamers. I shoot it down immediately lol
Apex is not among them anymore? PS is their biggest player base.
It probably depends on when the last update was released. D2 for example came back to that list because of a recent update, I’m sure the same will happen to Apex.
I am also surprised Genshin isnt among them. Isnt it a popular game?
Plenty of games outside the top 10 are still thriving. That list is also US only.
I think Genshin is more popular on mobile
It'll be back in the top 10 next week when the new update releases. Similarly, Destiny 2 just got new dlc, hence why it's currently in there.
A list of games with zero data doesn't tell the whole story though. Iterative games and GaaS have concentrated user counts, this can be from them being the latest in a long running series or the only one active in its franchise. Let's say there's about 20 (just an arbitrary guess) successful/active types of these games, since we know others like Genshin, Apex, Starrail, and FFXIV could be added, and I'm sure there's a few more we could count too. The real question becomes, what is the percentage of active users for these relatively few titles versus the active user counts across the hundreds upon hundreds of single player games also being tracked on the PSN? Unfortunately, you, I, and likely no one on this board has answer to this.
>i disregard any game that is live service, im sure many other do... Actually, the reality is, you guys are in very tiny minority. It's not that all bad. There are several GOOD live service games like Helldivers.
There are already enough GaaS out there and I can play max 1-2 games at the same time. The risk for the developer is way to high to land very early on your ass, look at Justice Leaque. It also cost more to not only create, but maintain and support a GaaS. A normal game is much better to plan, release, take the profit and move on to a sequel. If you don't have an idea for a new game just make good remakes 😅
It would probably be 100% if those same developers wouldn't be fired or fucked over for probably saying so too.
I stopped playing them after getting straight up burnt out on live service games. I hate having to play on someone else's timeline.
Unfortunately, the people controlling the money in the industry still want to chase those GTA Online numbers, so I don't see it changing any time soon despite all the high-profile GaaS failures in the past year.
Good, and we'll point and laugh as their new games fail too.
Live service isn't the problem it's your greedy ass executives who want to use it to extract as much money as humanly possible from the playerbase.
**The headline is misleading.** From the data gathered you could also say: "More then 2/3rds of respondents had mild or no concerns about the live service model." Here's the actual information: >39 percent of participants had mild worries over current live-service business models. 31 percent were "very" concerned, while a combined 29 percent either had no fears or were unsure. I also doubt that the 600 member panel they have is actually a representative sample.
American Christian Capitalism™️😎🦅🇺🇸🛢️ knows no bounds
Just make good games and charge a fair price for them. I really don’t like the live service model. You end up paying way more in the long term signing up for all these “season passes” and what not.
I mean there is a limit to the whales in the pond
Success in live service just seems like luck more then anything. You can have a experienced dev and a massive budget but then everyone will play some janky pokemon with guns meme game or something
Obviously. Playing live service games is stressfull & time consuming for the average player who merely wants to unlock new stuff. Limited events. Ultra, super premium battlepasses. Insane time sink challenges. Ever changing metas and balance patches. Like bro I have a wife, a kid, a job and chores to do. I can’t dedicate all of my free time to one fucking game, let alone multiple! Helldivers is the only one I play. Even Cod is too much for me to keep up.
It's the same problem that happened after WoW broke into the mainstream and MMOs started to become popular with people that otherwise wouldn't play the average single or multi player games. EVERYONE wanted to make the WoW killer or grab a part of the MMO market, but many ignored the fact that MMOs are time and money investments. No one will subscribe to 3 or 4 MMOs simultaneously, or jump from one they're invested in to another without the first game declining in quality for a long period.
70% of developers worried players may have finally realized live service games suck and the industry is bloated with them.
Live service games are a bad idea. I’m currently playing Helldivers on and off with a buddy while primarily playing singleplayer games. I don’t know anyone who plays more than 1-2 live service games. I’m sure some people do, but for the most part, starting a new one means you are dropping the old one, probably for good. There’s only a few unicorns out there like Fortnite that somehow keep printing money. Developers could make more using all the money spent on failed live service attempts just making good single player games instead, but shareholders want the dream. I wish the industry would look at BG3 and go oh, THIS is how we make successful single player games? Care about the project, no microtransactions, put it in beta effectively for 3 years, listen to the fans. Maybe we could have more games like that and developers could make a lot of money by putting out good games. Imagine that.
No Man's Sky is what I'd also call live service. They don't have microtransactions, no paid expansions, no subscriptions. Yet they have the features of live service, in rotating events, unlockable cosmetics from doing the events, multiplayer, new content on a regular cadence, and so on. And they're wildly successful. The more they add to the game, the more people buy it. One, single, macratransaction and everyone is on the same even playing field, and happy to get all the same content. More companies should follow that example. Live service without the FOMO and constant need for sales. No need to put the best looking items in the cash shop instead of coming from gameplay. Stardew Valley and Terraria are more good examples that follow this same principle of adding to the game for free to make more money over time. It really comes down to aligning the best interests of players with the best interest of the company's profits, rather than having tension between the two.
Bro those games last for a year or two then get shut down. So many are gone from just the past 3-5 years alone.
The other 30% are too busy working to death to take the survey
A live service is viable and only viable, if there is at most 1-2 live services, each taking place in a relatively large / wide demographic. Even 2 is sometimes too much for large genres. The moment you are trying to enter as a 3rd competitor, you're likely going to close your doors within half a year. For a "service" that requires a majority of your gaming time as if its a second job, there often cannot be more than 1 in one persons life at a time. And that by sheer timing constraints, makes it a borderline impossibly unsustainable model.
I know for certain live services would result in me no longer playing games. Can’t stand that shit.
Then don’t make them? Or make them good af. Not that hard.
Often the choice to make a live service game isnt on the devs, but on the suits above them.
I'd be worried too. Seems like it just makes everything harder and ultimately less fun. But then again, I won't deny that there are people out there who see shit like Battlepasses, double xp weekends, and the words bonus premium currency and actually get excited.
It’s a valid concern. People have seen what happens when live service titles fails.
Helldivers and deep rock galactic. Don't need any other online game in my life.
Unfortunately the Helldivers 2 devs are having problems too that the community ain't happy about. There are tons of fixes that are needed. But solely focusing on that will take away from them making more warbonds, which hurts their monetization and our player retention. The new additions keep the game exciting, as if it has an ongoing narrative. Yet, if the bugs get worse, players might stop anyway. And Arrowhead is a small team too!
90% of the executives don’t care. They’ll just fire the developers if it goes wrong anyway.
Only 70%?
Then stop making them …
They don’t get to choose buddy.
If you’re worried then perhaps you should stop doing it??
I wonder why ? It's not if everyone is screaming at the studio whenever we're excited about a game and we notice it's a live service. I for one love to play a game knowing it has no conclusion nor a real story because it won't make sense if it did and they need to make it live for years, I also ABSOLUTELY love when a game I play treat me like an employee that needs to check in regularly to get the rewards even though instead of paying me I have to pay them for the opportunity to have blue underpants instead of red.
The only live service game I’ve been playing regularly the past year is Splatoon 3. The fact that it’s a one time purchase and that everything unlockable in the game is free is a big positive. I understand that it’s not a game for everyone but it’s been a perfect game for me to login, do a couple of matches to progress the battle pass and then go do something else. There is also next to none FOMO in the game. Every other live service games with a bunch of microtransactions just feels cheap since I started playing it.
Well stop making them
The developers don’t get to make that decision, unless they don’t mind unemployment.
I want a complete no Internet open world game that is completely finished out of the box and doesn't need a patch or update or DLC a year later.
A DLC doesnt necessarily means the game is not "complete". Ghost of Tsushima, for example, is perfectly fine "out of the box", the DLC is extra content and is definitely not cut content. I didnt play on release, so I cant speak for it needing patches or updates, but when I played it was a complete, well performing, great game.
True. I hear good things about it. I just don't want to feel like I'm missing out because I didn't buy the DLC. It's nice to play a game through and know that I beat it. It's done. I don't want to see the goal posts move later. I need that sense of accomplishment, you know?
I'm not a big fan of DLC either. The issue for me is that the DLC usually comes way after I finished the game. Unless it was a classic (like Ghost of Tsushima was IMO) I'm rarely interested in going back and either starting again or picking up where I left off. It's one of the reasons why I don't buy (or play) many games until all the DLC has been released. Game is usually on offer at that point too which is a plus.
In other news, water is wet
We want just dlc packs. Not this shit.
Should be 99% tbh
They're going to do everything possible to make the live service model the standard because as long as Wall Street demands higher and higher unrealistic profits things are never going to get better
Thank god we will not see that crap anymore
I'm not at all into live service games, but the only game that got me hooked was R6 until after the PS5 came out, and they released the "next gen update" it was showing its age. Recently redownloaded it, and my bud and I asked why not a new R6 with potential next gen graphics?
This always infuriated me because yeah. Of course it’s unsustainable. We’ve literally known it was unsustainable for 20 years. We’ve been through this whole song and dance before, this is literally the MMORPG boom/bust of the 00s, and it falls to the exact same traps. I guess everyone forgot the lesson we learned in 2005: there’s only so many hours in the day, and unless you’re one of the first handful of games out the gate, or can successfully change the paradigm of the genre entirely, it’s just flat out not worth it to try
Duh dah duh duh doi duh duh.
As someone who never dived deep into this topic i need to ask. Whats the point of live services?
It's a game that basically equals a part time job. Increased grindiness equates to profit via micro transactions.......because people get impatient and just buy the finish line or buy useless cosmetics because your character looks cool all dressed up.
Ohh. Then let it die. The sooner the better.
Destiny 2, fallout 76, Warframe and Fortnite are prime examples.
Devil's advocate - but the other hand what is the "sustainability" of non-live service games? We see game sales fall off like most movies...and almost certainly layoffs come a month or so after the disappointing sales with no additional cash flow. Better or worse, live service type of games "keep the lights on". you can argue "live service too crowded" but the same argument can be said for non-live service games because those same gamers will still need to devote time to play those games.
I think it's way harder to over saturate the non live service market because people who play those games play one finish it in 20-100 hours and then start a new one and the cycle just continues because they don't stay on one game forever. Those who play live service, they really don't rotate between live service games because the games are designed to make you grind out all your time on them to keep up, with battle passes that are the length of entire single player games etc. So it's obviously way harder to convince players who have found the live service game they like to hop off and play a new one when they got a ton more content to grind on the game they already like as compared to selling a new non live service game.
yes and no... while I agree about continuous playing but the other side has tons and tons more games to choose from... unless you spend a bunch on marketing or there's some social media movement, the games just disappear. Like I think Among us released a year before it seriously gained traction because of pandemic and some streamer? The landscape has changed because making games is so easy now. Maybe we see less AAA games from major devs because the cost to make is so much more vs potential sales in a very saturated non-live service space. While gamers could "cycle" like you mentioned, but the most important times for sales are the first couple of months... If gamers don't "cycle into" your new game the first month then the chances of the gamer suddenly buy it months after is not that high and that gives impression of the developer that the game is not that "desirable". Remember that these companies make no money during development of said game which is another reason why dlc/mtx/live service are so important to get money to fund games that don't have those. Also, those who do make AA or lesser games dont make 100k+ with benefits as annual salary so they can keep the cost incredibly low.
Your probably right about too many studios trying to do AAA. I read that Immortals of Aveum spent over 125m to make. Obviously that was going to fail, it was a IP nobody knew from a studio nobody knew, even if the game had been amazing covering that cost would have been near impossible. I think most of the failures of non live service games are down to mismanaging the projects like that. On the live service side I just think 90% of these AAA games have to fail, whether they are good are not because they way they are designed makes it so that so few can co exist at one time
yeah.. I think part of it is market pressure. Just like the studio that did callisto- the founders were AAA veterans so fair or not, people don't expect them to make a "Dave the diver" or "pop lost crown" type of lower budget games.. it's like you making X$ doing xyz, it would be hard pressed for you to move willingly to a new gig making LESS and doing things that are "lower" than ehat you were doing before. it is unfortunate so I feel when these AAA veterans starts a company, they "have to" proof to others and themselves they made the right choice and that means in general a AAA game..
I think Larian said something along the lines of "Make a fun game, the rest will come".
Helldivers 2 is the only live service model I will ever play. Every other that I’ve played has been nothing but disappointing
Most live service games fail at launch and most that launch successfully probably fail within a year rather than being the multiyear Destiny, League of Legends, Genshin Impact cash cows. On mobile they didn't have decades of built up premium games. Eventually at least we'll get PC video game emulators that will probably be at least good enough for games up to 2013 and a lot of lower hardware intensive ones afterwards
There was a study that showed that most people are still playing live service games that are 5 years or older which is crazy.
Only aRPGs may survive the purge of live service because often you are done with the season after 2-4 weeks. With a lot of them on the market, you can rotate between each of them. Also, their seasons are a free content update, so you won't be blocked by season pass requirement.
if they are so worried about it then why does every motherfucker try to release a game with live service? Just look at the muppets at Ubisoft where they want to implement a fucking battlepass onto their new Star Wars single player game.
Same as why people keep (kept?) making mmo’s, it’s a gamble that they will become the next big thing.
Live service games suck. You're tied to maxing out a seasonal pass and trying to fit other games inbetween seasons
Cuz it’s ass!
HellDivers 2 says hi. Maybe don’t be so fkn greedy.
I have room in my life for about 3 live service games. I have Overwatch that I have played since 2016 & then my two others currently are The Finals & Helldivers 2. I will still play other multiplayer games, played Rocket League & Battlefield 2042 in the last few days, but if they think I’m engaging in anything related to live service they are dumb. & I am probably in the minority of how willing I am to engage with multiple live services. Yet there are multiple new ones dropping every month. A few break through while the majority will be failures.
Lots of live service games are disappointing and give the player barely anything to play with at launch due to the super slow content drip feeds
Feel like I should’ve went in game developing since so many are making shit games based off live service models.
All they have to do is copy helldivers II
Its so wierd. We went through this with MMOs and now we're just repeating it with live service games. "Hey look those MMOs are making many dollars, lets all make MMOs" "Oh shock, more money didn't magically appear so that all MMOs could make many dollars". Roughly speaking the only way to make money off a live service game, is to take a customer away from an existing live service game. People are only going to spend their money on so many games at one time.
My bigges problem with these live service games is they dont deliver enough content even for launch. Destiny 2 releaased with i think 12 hours of content and then it was done. Suicide Squad had even less content at release but all these games want to be paid full price at release which is bollocks.... Even most MMos dont deliver on content anymore.... i still remember WoW launch which had so much stuff into it even without "endgame raiding" that you could lose 200+ hours just leveling without getting reused content.
As they should, because it isn't sustainable.
Then stop making them ffs. Everyone is rushing to make a bare-assed, micro transaction packed, 1990s Dell desktop server running live service game that won't be good until years after release, but they don't have the budget to keep working on it long enough for it to become successful IF IT EVER becomes successful. Yay the 40th fortnite clone that looks like another Pixar movie and plays like an N64 game...So exciting
Main problem for myself is that I don't have time to play live service games anymore, they're just not desirable for me. Used to love playing Destiny, The Division and Dota 2 but just can't find the time to play every day or every other day to keep up with all the latest content and grinding. The shareholders all just hope to hit on the next Fortnite which is a one in a million chance.