The live service games also have the issue of desiring to monopolize the attention of a player. So the more they are, the more they canibalise each other

Games as goods >>> Games as services/live services/cloud streaming/online only Own your games. Keep playing not keep paying.

There isnt enough room for every game to be a live service. Most are built in a way that isnt even sustainable. So im not shocked

Making a live service game is like swinging for the fences in baseball. Sure, you can hit a homerun, but there's a much higher chance that you'll strike out.

As someone who's dunked hundreds of hours into Knockout City, it hurts seeing its name lumped in with the rest of these. Tons of love and care was put into the game by everyone who played a part in making it and it was an incredibly fun game to play and world to exist in, but the odds were really stacked against its success - its marketing campaign was poor, it was stuck under EA for a while before they went independent, and it was just made in the wrong time where people don't have to spend $20 on an online multiplayer game. Seeing it become "just another shut-down live service game" after two rocky years was painful, but we saw it coming from pretty early on. Velan Studios, Knockout City's developers, decided to close the game to move onto larger projects, but provided builds of the game so that players could continue playing on privately hosted servers. Preserving the game in this way after its sunset is an extra step that I really admire, proving that they really do love this project and wanted to give something to those who love it just as much.

Attention monopolization is definitely the killing blow to these live services, most of the time. They need to be profitable and, to be profitable, need to keep players coming back... while every other live service game is already trying or doing that.

Fatigue is real. You can only lose to so many third parties in a row on Apex before you just want to slam your head in the door.

Smaller studios making a live service game is just the new version of when every studio tried to make an MMO years ago.

Seeing that list is a big yikes because I remembered not being surprised at a few of them like Babylon's Fall. Players only have so much time on their hands and if they've already invested time in a live service game of their choice, it's gonna be so hard to pull them away even if your game is similar in genre or gameplay. You had to grab that audience in the beginning or miss out like when all the BR games were being pushed out to mimic Fortnite. Really good breakdown here.

1.59 x 500 is most certainly not 975.

I remember back in the days, games like Unreal Tournament or CS1.6 would provide patches over the internet, and servers were mostly community servers, so companies didn't have to spend such a massive amount of money in servers, all while working in a new title to release one or two years later. And people didn't complain about lack of content or anything like that, people kept playing those games for decades and even still today, even after Epyc closed the official master servers for Unreal, there are many players still playing them and even releasing unofficial patches to maintain these games. It's not a problem of not having enough money or human resources or anything, it's just that these companies are now corporations and corporations don't make games, they make money. You will never hear of any of these companies allowing community servers ever again, in any of their new releases. And when games like BG3 are released, they will argue that "this can't be the norm" because they know they are going to cut their profit if they go back to the old philosophy.

I'm really sad about knockout city, that game was so unique and fun

I just want a game like tf2 that gets updated, isn’t scummy, has a good community, and doesn’t die out of the gates. 😞

People look at live service games like Fortnite and want in on that cash, but they don't seem to realize there's only ONE live service game per gamer. All of them want all of your time, always. This harshly limits the market. Making a live-service game is like buying a lottery ticket. You're hoping that you will be the one to get and keep the attention of your entire market demographic so you can milk them for easy money ad infinitum. Chances are, you'll be one of the hundreds that fail to be the one, just scraping by or, more likely, getting shuttered when the million dollar execs realize that their projected revenue stream won't materialize and pull support. Live service games depend on steady, high quality gameplay content updates to keep players engaged and willing to shell out for battlepasses, "conveniences" and cosmetic items. Without a hefty investment, you're unlikely to succeed, but even WITH a heavy investment, you might not be able to pull people away from their current live service due to what the PLAYER invested into that game and the community and friends they made there. It's a gamble in the same way as trying to be the next WoW-killer was. You either win big or you go home with nothing, because none of those career execs are willing to accept just *some* of the pie. They want it all or they'll axe the project to invest into something that will.

Growing up in the PS2 era, so many games that were sold as complete products with the developers delivering a complete experience to gamers. The idea of “always-online, constantly-updating” live service games always came across to me as pushing incomplete products to fans on the hopes of what they envisioned the full game would be based on the potential they saw in it. I believe this model was made to take advantage of newer generation gamers that simply weren’t around for those days and wouldn’t know any better. I’m just glad with time more people’s eyes have begun to open to this crap.

Yeah the problem with alot of these games is they need the players to treat the game like a second job and that is not viable in the long run especially with the amount of games coming out, i've even done this myself and it's simply not worth it.

Wow what a great show man the edit the script the idea everything is perfect

Every time a live service game dies the world of gaming gets a little bit better.

I used to play a lot of MMOs in the past, and at first I thought that these games would grow alongside me, because as I grew up from being a kid so too were the games being updated, but then I noticed that those games from being a paid subscription type, started becoming F2P and focused on microtransactions for their revenues, that's when I started seeing the downfall of the games that I played, most of the people that played the games started leaving, and thats when you started seeing the games trying to take shortcuts and lowering the quality/experience they used to have, when a game that I played for more than 10 years went down thats when I realized that these companies don't care about their playerbase, they act like they care or listen to the playerbase but no matter how much feedback you provide to the devs, you see that that they do whatever they feel like with the games and its why great games end up falling, many of the games that I used to play could have been saved, but that would have required for these companies to take risk which they never do as they only play it safe and do things that only guarantee profits, I understand that companies have their shareholders and investors on their back because nobody wants to lose money, but people get tired quickly of companies trying to make a quick buck out of them, and not making any worthwhile content for what they pay for in return, and this is the reason why the gacha industry has gone out of control, all gacha games basically have a couple of years at most before they close down, and its all because of these bad business practices that for trying to just make a quick buck people catch on and jump ship while they can, the players that truly suffer are those that are loyal to the games that they love and stay aboard a sinking ship, because all the time and money they invest are things that they can never get back, and for the most part once one of these games goes down it basically becomes lost media, and thats another hard pill to swallow for those that enjoyed many of the games that have become end of service. The most frustrating part out of all of this though, is that these companies that are basically making a quick buck for making these gacha games with a shelf life, are basically killing all other games with a live service because people have stopped becoming interested in those types of games, and thats why MMOs in recent years have become unpopular and its why the situation has become worse than ever, but those companies once they close down their gacha games, they usually have another gacha game ready so that they can basically repeat the process infinitely, and this loop will never end because this new era of gamers just play whats popular out there, and then they just move on to the next game no matter how much money or time they had wasted on the previous game, and for the most part they don't care if the games become lost media.

Make a video about why Lazy Town fell off

I'm glad the money men and investors are jumping in on Web3 and crypto. Now gaming can finally start to heal.

is "Fragalia lost ends" supposted to be dragalia lost? typos aside i do find it interesting whenever somebody brings up dragalia in a video about live services, with it being a gacha game and all. alongside only getting publicity since it was published by nintendo (with nintendo's meddling actually being a major contributor to its eos). meanwhile theres an endless torrent of new gacha games that shut down after only a year or so (if its published by nexon america dont expect it to last). and while gacha games are still a type of live service, ultimately they are form of it that pre-dates the modern trend that most people are referring to when they say "live service". (in a similar vein to how mmos are live service games but gennerally are not what people discuss when it comes to live services)

The game I've played most is Team Fortress 2 with 2000 hours. It's basically an anti-live service game because there's been no major updates for 6 years, but a good game can be played forever with no new content.

Not surprising there! Live service is completely unsustainable when greed is usually involved! The market is over saturated and these games demand too much of your time. Too many live service games and not enough time to play them all! Some of us don’t have enough time to devote to these games because we have other more important things to do. Limited time events, gambling/loot-based gatcha mechanics galore and too much effort revolves around MTX to continually “milk” the user base by exploiting short attention spans! Lastly, this type of greedy implementation bleeds into many full-priced retail games!

Something interesting about live service games for me, is that whenever the game is released on day 1, the game felt "unfinished". A really good example of this is probably Sea of Thieves where, even SoT players says that the game only felt "finished" after around 3 years after release and updates. Usually I'll give live service games some time and see if it'll survive. If it DOES survive long enough the the game will probably stick around for a while. I think most live service games that dies, usually is not even 2 years old

The main problem with live service is the fact that most that happen will end up experiencing death. Mostly because they forgot about the core experience

I really can't share your optimism cause a “bad game” for us players isn't the same as a “bad game” for the company behind it. As long as it makes money, regardless of how players react, things like diablo immortal will keep being made.

Wow you're so underrated! The script, the editing, everything is top notch!

Sleepy unknowingly outlined why Live Service games have eclipsed traditional AAA games. The market punishes mediocrity much harder than AAA single player does. If Resident Evil 4 comes out...SP gamers play it for a month and then they're looking for their next fix. This allows a Callisto Protocol to come out and succeed despite not being as good as RE4. In Live Service, you never get that. If a company produces a Fortnite clone that's not as good as Fortnite...instant death. Live Service success requires higher quality or gameplay variation to succeed. Single player rewards mediocrity. Live Service punished mediocrity.

Except for helldivers 2 baby, that thumbnail should show the door blowing up on the grim reaper and a group of helldivers flipping him off

Me in 2019: "I can't believe EA and Activision are holding Respawn and Bungie hostage for live service games respectively! Apex and Destiny 2 are doing so well..now we'll never get Titanfall 3 or [version of Destiny that doesn't need eververse]!" Me in 2023 after Respawn came out and publically delayed Tf3 indefinetly and Bungie doubled down on the eververse without Activision's restrictions: 😐😶‍🌫️

I shall do everything in my power to boost this in the algorithm. Really good video!

Very well put together video! Hope this sparks your KZfaq career. Only thing I would change is the audio is a bit low but that's a easy fix for future uploads

alternative title: squidward talks about games

"This video was long." Me (who watches ponder sprocket videos but also makes KZfaq videos): it feels so short but the passion is felt throughout my bones!

I really wish more live service games got turned into offline games or, they use the assets to create a singleplayer game. Revived witch was absolutely gorgeous, with great ost but the gameplay was pretty terrible and, it was gacha, really wish it got turned into a singleplayer turn based rpg or something. It hurts seeing all those games in that list with so much hard work put into them go to waste.

It’s the fact a lot of them release broken on launch then by the time they patch everything everyone has left the game and nobody is left playing so they have to shut it down

What I find funny in some of these GaaS games is that what they need to thrive is a community, a playerbase, yet for some stupid reason great games go and become exclusive to Epic, which basically kills their playerbase before the game even releases, it boggles my mind. Spellbreak will be missed :(

New free to play tactic now's now starting to become popular which was something that should have been considered years ago, when the live service dies the devs can simply turn the live service game into a pay to play offline model. Capcom did with with Mega Man xDive and Square did this with Chocobo racing GP. I look forward to Overwatch 2 eventually doing this as well.

Even though I haven't played it in ages now I feel like the biggest reason why Fortnite was so successful with their model was because they had/have the best value in their battle passes. They're the only live service game I can think of that actually gives players v bucks back to them from the premium pass for playing the game. I think Call of Duty 2019 did that for a while but stopped. I hate battle passes now in other games that don't give you any currency back or for free and never buy anything in those. It's funny it's like they're scared giving players some of the currency back will make them lose money but that's exactly what will put players off giving them any money in the first place.

The funniest part is companies that have multiple live service games all competing against themselves. They expect you to some how log in every day, play for hours at a time and spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on MTX.... and still play other games some how.

TF2 and DRG: We are alone in this hell on earth.

What’s annoying is how. Old game shut down sever force u to buy Xbox one

Honestly the best video on this topic I've seen. I'm glad someone else shares the opinion that Live Service games aren't inherently bad, they can honestly be great. I personally think live service model is really good for both the player and developer, but only when it's done well; Players get new content without having to buy a new game, developers can work on smaller updates over time instead of rushing out a big new game by the end of the year, Players can support the game by buying skins and whatnot, etc. I think live services only really work for games/series that have a huge audience, like Star Wars Battlefront for an example, would be amazing as a *good* live service game.

Very informative 😄 Live Service Games can be good but they keep trend chasing, nickel and diming players, oversaturation, etc etc etc etc. They need to know that there are just too many Live Service Games out there right now, and the gaming space just doesn't have room for another Live Service Title at the moment.

These corporate developers are so disassociated from the gaming world it’s honestly crazy we still call them game developers. They have no interest in what we as the players want. But at the same time it does leave a big gap for games like Battlebit for example to drop something fresh and with the players in mind and benefit massively

Holy shit I totally forgot about "tighten up the graphics."

Dead by Daylight just had their 7th year anniversary....live service

This was a great video. You hit the nail on the head at the end of the video. There are bad companies, but there are also great ones. That’s why I really like investing my time and money into single player games with no micro transactions. If I pay $60 for a game and get the entire game, I am more than happy. (If the game is good of course)

The biggest reason so many developers really like the idea of Games as a Service is because a single complete physical/digital copy of a game is only one singular purchase that happens in a single instance and which the money gained from that purchase will be consumed to pay the costs the company incurs into the future, which means that money can quickly run out. By comparison, a subscription/seasonal purchase of cosmetic goods in a game produces a stable and continuous stream of revenue to the company, the dream every entertainment industry management person has, because entertainment companies inherently lack the stability that say, a Bread company has (since people always buy bread to eat and consistently buy that food). Entertainment companies are dependent on the constant output of its media, which is inevitably of differing quality, appeal to different audiences, and rarely performs the same or better than the previous title. So, entertainment companies easily die if they go through too long of a drought without quality titles that make more money than they consume.

I was hyped for the Sui cide Squad game when it was first announced but as soon as they said it was a live service game and that basically the 4 characters all play the same (everyone has guns), I basically lost all the hype. It is disappointing to see that THIS was the game Rocksteady was working on for years after Arkham Knight.

what i hate is when games charge 10$ a month and then there are also microtransactions on top of a face value premium and expansion packs (looking at blizzard)

very good video, hope to see more

Will never buy product that requires you to rely on a service to use until they get bored and decide to close servers leaving me with nothing

Seeing townscaper at the end really surprised me

I had no clue Knockout City was F2P. I would have tried it if I knew. HAD NO IDEA. How did marketing fail?

Despite it's issues Warframe will always be the only good example of what a live service game should be. Fair monetization, no paywalls, frequent content drops, listening to player feedback etc...

Great video, dude!

Live service means the developer will keep working on it, as long as people keep paying for it. They will never actually admit that though, so they can't admit they gave up on it when it stopped making money...

One of the big things for me is a lot of live service games talk about new content but only add a splash of color, an event name, and 20 new over priced skins.

from what i understand, genshin impact is a live service game (mostly) because the devs want to make it one of the biggest games of all time. the game was HUGE at launch and its almost tripled/quadrupled in content these past 3 years. and the game isnt even half way finished. while other factors were probably at play, one of the major reasons they decided to make it live service is probably because developing a game for 10+ years without it generating any revenue is just not worth it. yea, some of the ways they squeeze out money from the playerbase is a little predatory, but it definitely feels like you need to go out of your way to pay money, as opposed to how in-your-face lots of other predatory games are about it. and thats excluding the fact the ingame premium rewards are actually quite generous for this type of model. personally, id say it definitely payed off. for both the devs AND the players. because the game is great. its beautiful and magical and mostly entertaining. some people might not like the anime-style its going for (including visuals, writing, voice acting etc) but i found it quite enjoyable. and most people might be turned off by the gacha mechanics, but its definitely a side mechanic. and not the face of the game.

When I first saw this video my first reaction to the list was that most of the games on it were cheaply made games that weren't deep, and they failed for being bad not for being live service and the ending of the video summed up what I wanted to say so perfectly.

That old commercial of "tighten up the graphics a little bit" is so bad and cringe lmao. Graphics aren't that important at the end of it all.

Shame what happened with echo vr, some management guy shutting it down even though it still had an active community

Invest time in a game? If the time is well spent, the journey is the reward. If there is a supposed "payout" then the journey wasn't worth it.

An overlooked aspect of live-service model is, what about people without the internet connection necessary? Game after game comes out that sparks my interest, but learning that it's live service kills that interest. Without offline capability, I'm left out due to my spotty connection in the Virginia backwoods. Some live-service games have disconnection penalties, which means I'd more than likely get punished even outside of multiplayer activities! Ultimately, I've been relegated to mainly singleplayer titles, with the occasional co-op/invasion like Elden Ring. On one hand, the majority of microtransaction hell has passed over me, but on the other hand, I've missed out on some potentially great experiences. My brother and I used to love co-op Halo when we were children, but even if I buy a new XBox and Halo Infinite, we couldn't play online because of lag. 343, in all their wisdom, also decided to not ship split-screen local multiplayer as well, so I'd realistically need TWO XBoxes and two separate copies of Infinite hooked up in the same household to play together in the first place! The best part is, unless I move to a location with better internet, I'll never get to experience Infinite. It'll run for X amount of years (not much longer, if the player count and sales are to be taken as a sign), suck up every last cent they can manage, then shut down for good. People ten years from now will most likely be unable to run the discs they have for the game because it'll constantly spam them with the "unable to connect to server" message, even during what little of the campaign they can play (assuming they've got the connection to download the campaign because THAT wasn't shipped in 1.0 either!). Meanwhile, someone else can pop in Hollow Knight, Elden Ring, or Devil May Cry (hopefully 6 by then!), and be able to play from start to finish, 100%ing these game without needing internet once. My point being: I feel like a second-class gamer as more and more games require constant internet connection and a non-prepaid phone number, and they drain money from the playerbase until it dries up before they shut down. Most don't even get a proper send-off patch that allows the game's PVE (if it exists) to be played off-line; they just cease to function! The _skeletons_ of these games will litter shelves and libraries long afterwards, and that's just a damned shame.

This guys voice is uncomfortably close to a Squidward impression.

Nice video man

live service as a concept is great, but the problem is that the time it demands means you can really only play maybe 3 of them at once - if that - which means that people are gonna pick a few early on and kinda ignore everything else. seems a few others have said it already, but it's something i noticed when this trend towards live-service started. adding it to single-player games also worsens it imo. You can't just finish the campaign, maybe check out the multiplayer and DLCs, then be done with the game. Perhaps 100% it if you want to. now, you're expected to log on constantly to get your dailies and check out the new live-service content drop thing, explore the store, grind for a bit, etc. It's the antithesis of what a singleplayer game should be, and as with everyone else i'm damn near praying companies stop doing it.

IMO if I game requires me to connect to the internet, it is bad, no if, and, or but. I will not sink time and money into a game that can be shut down anytime a company feels like it!

You forgot to add Overwatch 2 in there.

underrated video, nice job

Whenever a corporate person or politician speaks, always expect the opposite.

Why didn't youtube recommend me this 2 months ago? In addition to the point about the cost of server hosting, monthly networking probably dwarfs the cost of instances.

the mistake of live service is getting the order of things confused people play a good game and want to play it for hundreds of hours nobody finds a game good because it promises to deliver fun for hundreds of hours/stretches itself over hundreds of hours

Andrew Wilson should change his last name into "Bateman". It would fit like a glove.

In live service games the customers are cows, the live service is a milking parlour, Their job is to make the cows stay in the milking parlour and produce milk through manipulative game design. My udders hurt.. Can we do something else now?

Companies thinking this will make them more money, but not factoring the costs that cause them huge losses

It's the CEOs and shareholders that turn a badass idea like a batman arkham spinoff- arkham knights -and turn it into a live-service failure because money

The is one live service game that has lived since 2012

You’re gonna blow up on yt one day

I stopped playing any game that doesn't respect my time or my money

AWS at scale is negotiable. Can’t use website calculators for what these publishers are doing.

live service gaming sure is the way of that guy's future

They just want a reliable source of income to keep in the long term because they dont see any other way to monetize games.

It’s not because they are live service that they die, it’s because they’re bad games.

I miss echo vr, and seeing it mentioned in the list of all the shut down games hit me.

Honestly i miss the era of you just simply get an game and you have everything with no micro-transactions, no dlc's, no nothing. The only online game i would play is Fortnite, Warcraft and Switch (Played Roblox for a long time until i quit this year). If i REALLY enjoy the game i love and then i would get the DLC's. I'm just tired of companies only care about money than their entire fanbase.

im glad this video got so much traction! heres hoping you get more success and go down to 1 job 😂

It’s just not a profitable model simple. You pointing out Server cost is huge. I don’t think people understand how much it costs to „rent“ a server for these companies. As much as we hate it, this is why they push bundles so much.

Everyone trying to copy the successful live service games doesn't want to copy the hard work to put into enough content as the successful ones.

i wish we would get companies willing to make full on games. no live services. just a full game with its full story and everything ready the moment we boot up a game.

What's the last game you showed at the end of the video it looks great. Awesome video.

What the triple A games could take from live service ones is more content for example: SONIC FRONTIERS was relased in 2022, the game had problems and people were complaing about the content that wasn't there but then in 2023, they released more content for the game like new chalenges, cut content the spindash which is the move they always wanted and a New ending for the game with playable characters coming with completely new abilties and this without any micro-transactions

Andrew Wilson has that super villain aura.

Destiny 2 was undoubtedly in a better place before adopting the battle pass and seasons thing. Now it's plagued by rampant cheating, immense server instability, content droughts, FOMO, and greed. Now it's all coming back to bite Bungie in the ass since player numbers are dropping again. I had hope when Bungie said they learned from Season of the Plunder (where player numbers were at their lowest) but alas, we were lied to and the game is now suffering for it. People just want to see Destiny 2 conclude now so they can finally stop playing it. Yes, Destiny 2 has officially become a game that feels like a full time job with all of the FOMO tactics they employ. Destiny 2 has become a game that depends on FOMO to keep players around and it's starting to fail

this is actually a good video... my only complaint is that the volume was too low

When games were on disks: finished game for a finished price. When games became downloadable: unfinished game for a finished price, buy the rest of the game in the form of dlc. When games are fully online: unfinished game for an unfinished price, eventually the game will finish but the price never will.

Season NINE in 2 years?! No wonder they were shut down.

Why wouldn't the closer a games consumer base evaporates the cheaper it would be to keep the servers up and running?