The live service game structure cannot continue like this.
When Jim Ryan left as CEO of Sony, he left behind a strong commitment to Live-Service games. Most of them were unsuccessful. Games from studios like Guerilla and Naughty Dog have been in development for a while. The acquisition of Bungie shows that Sony is leaning towards the Live-Service market. As far as I can see, this is not working.
Bad dog The Last of Us Online was canceled in December 2023, and many other Sony projects have either gone without updates or have been similarly shuttered, specifically the most recent release: Harmony. Sony isn’t the only studio and publisher relying on the Live-Service system, of course. Capcom has also made forays into the system, experimenting with things like Monster Hunter Worldlimited-time event quests, daily login bonuses, and seasonal events, a first for the series. Their biggest motivation, Primitiveended updates after four seasons, which is nowhere near the 10-year plan many games of this type are aiming for. But Primitive And Monster Hunter World at least playable. The hype for Wild Monster Hunter understandably brought many players back during the Return to the World campaign. Many games were less fortunate.
Square Enix’s live offerings include mobile games and a party shooter similar to Splatoon SpongeBob Star have suffered their own lockdowns and closures. On April 29, 2024 Nier reborn closed after the story was finished. A story that no one could experience outside of YouTube videos because there were no plans for an offline version of the game. Square Enix later announced that the global version of Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius will close in October 2024, taking with it collaborations with pop stars like Ariana Grande and Lara Croft Grave robber with it, unless you can download and play the Japanese version. SpongeBob Star will also no longer retail for $29.99 as of October 4, 2024, moving entirely to a freemium model.
In the past year alone, there have been numerous incidents involving live service games that failed to attract audiences or achieve the success they were hoping for. Fate 2 released a highly anticipated expansion in Final shapeThe culmination of a 10 year long story that began Destiny when it first released. All that praise didn’t shield Bungie workers from layoffs that occurred in October 2023, before the expansion launched, and in July 2024, right after the first major storyline of the new year’s plan began for Destinythe world is moving forward
This reminds me, everything is so fragile. An entire game can, due to losing staff and not being able to meet previous standards or closing the game altogether, disappear completely, disappear from everyone’s consoles, phones and computers like dust in the wind. Years of people’s lives suddenly disappear into nothing. It feels like an incredible waste; everyone’s time, effort and money.
Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia turn off in February 2024. A mobile game focused on celebration Final Fantasyhistory of ‘, a la before Separation game, featuring popular and lesser-known characters. One chapter might be about Judge Gabranth from Final Fantasy XII bonded with Gau, the wild child from Final Fantasy VI. Another scene features Aerith talking directly to Kadaj, Sephiroth’s clone from Final Fantasy VII: Children’s Adventand tries to make him come into his own. No amount of great character interaction (at least in my opinion) or turn-based, JRPG-driven gameplay can save it.
The global version doesn’t even get to read the full story content that was released in the original Japanese version. The servers were separated for about 6-8 months of delay so global server players got a glimpse of what was coming, and in this case, what they would never see. I don’t know the reason for the shutdown. Omnia Opera House and I may never. It could be anything from not being profitable enough for Square Enix or simply having nowhere for the game to go. For all my praise, it’s me mourning the death of a gacha game. I spent money on this game. And now, everything I spent money on is gone, sinking into the digital abyss. Thankfully, they’ve stated that all chat and cutscenes from the game will be preserved on the official Square Enix YouTube Channel, but who knows how long that will last.
This is the fate that awaits any and all of these mobile games, or digital experiences that are monetized. People can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to get a character or a skin or an item (the extremely expensive and labor-intensive heirlooms of Apex Legends come to mind) and then as soon as you get it, you can get a message saying, “Sorry, all your hard work and investment is gone. We’re shutting down the servers in two days.”
All of these things can happen to a game you like or dislike. Things you like can fall apart in more ways than just shutting down. In the pursuit of money, these live service endeavors can compromise their identity in favor of more cosmetic real-money transactions, battle passes that you have to pay for to get the full rewards, or even just trying to get as many people to play as possible, trying to please everyone and ultimately pleasing no one, or at least not pleasing me anymore, in the case of Fate 2.
I’ve seen games prioritize repetitive quests and extremely mind-numbing collection activities. Seasonal story progression and seasonal experience upgrades simply boil down to doing the same activity on higher or lower difficulty levels, listening to the same voice, over and over again. And, to add salt to the wound, Bungie announced that it would be reviving its single-player sci-fi first-person shooter series Marathon like a sniper
It’s enough to make even the most loyal players give up when they feel like everything they’re doing or looking forward to isn’t an industry-wide priority. It’s even worse when any sort of challenge reward is just a funny little sticker to hang on your character or an in-game weapon that’s going to get beat anyway in a few months. Incremental power, incremental features, incremental attention are all factors. After all, when you have a game that takes over your daily routine of clocking in and clocking out, where do people with other real-life responsibilities fit into your new ritual game? People will stick with what works.
The success of something like Astro Robot Rescue Mission, The Elden Ring and its DLC, and smaller projects that win multiple awards every year, like a Signal or Dave the diver shows that there is a lot of money to be made from things that don’t look like they’re trying to squeeze every penny out of everyone who interacts with them. Publishers need to realize that.
