Turning points are tricky things: they seem so obvious in hindsight, but are tough to spot when they’re actually happening. False positives are common, because all manner of things can seem pivotal in the moment, but transpire to be far less important in the long term.
This probably speaks to a general tendency to underestimate the sheer power of inertia. Especially in an industry like video games, where product development cycles now run for many years, changing course is rather like steering an oil tanker and even very consequential-seeming events can have little real impact on the direction of publishers and studios.
All of which is to say that I’m cautious about declaring that 2024 has been a pivotal year for the industry’s obsession with live service models. I know how many projects are still lumbering forward fuelled by a dangerous cocktail of inertia and sunk-cost fallacy, sweetened by a dash of hope (and a lot of cope).
Nonetheless, there’s undoubtedly change in the air – discussions about the merits of live service models are more rational and grounded, and executives who have spent the past few years frothing at the notion that every IP in their company’s back catalogue is the next Fortnite just waiting to happen have finally stopped getting quite so high on their own supply. If this hasn’t been an actual turning point of a year, then at least it might herald a 2025 when product planning meetings can consider the merits and drawbacks of live service models objectively, rather than acting like wild-eyed prospectors in a gold rush.
The reason for the sudden onset of sobriety over live service games is, of course, that 2024 has really been a brutal year for so many high-profile titles. Sony’s Concord is the new poster child for failed live service games – shutting down after only a matter of weeks, and unfortunately taking its studio with it – but as dramatic as that may have been, it’s on-theme for the year. Concord never looked destined for success, having failed to stir consumer interest right from the outset.
Executives who spent the past few years frothing at the notion that every IP in their back catalogue is the next Fortnite have finally stopped getting quite so high on their own supply
We’ve also recently seen what are effectively end-of-life announcements for titles whose failures were arguably much harder to forecast, though. Warner Bros’ Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Ubisoft’s XDefiant are both on their way out; the former based on a well-known DC Comics IP and developed by Arkham series veterans Rocksteady, and the latter being launched in May to much fanfare about achieving millions of players in a very short space of time.
There are, of course, specific reasons for the failures of each of these titles. You can take them on a case-by-case basis and pick apart their issues. Concord was a hero shooter with an astonishingly uninspired and boring roster of characters (the design of which, both visually and in terms of abilities, is arguably the single most important aspect of a hero shooter), Suicide Squad made the frankly baffling decision to have you tasked with killing the characters people actually want to play as, and XDefiant, though far more competent overall than the other two, was competing directly with Call of Duty (and slightly less directly with Apex Legends) and simply couldn’t maintain its momentum in the face of that juggernaut.
The specifics of each case, though, don’t change the existence of the trend; expensively developed service based games were an insanely risky prospect in 2024. The trend goes far beyond the games mentioned; Square Enix effectively sunset Marvel’s Avengers last year and cancelling plans for further Foamstars development (despite it only launching in February), while Ubisoft’s long-delayed Skull & Bones flopped at launch, to name but a few more.
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Some publishers have already started to sense that risk and pull back, such as Sega, who cancelled Creative Assembly’s extraction shooter Hyenas before it even got to market. This isn’t a new trend, after all – you can go all the way back to the likes of Bioware’s ill-fated Anthem to find cases of successful, well-established developers getting badly tangled up in the nets of their efforts to launch live service games.
There is important nuance here, however. Live service games are difficult, demanding, and extremely risky, but the baby shouldn’t go out with the bathwater – even if consumers have become much more cynical and negative about these games in recent years (with good reason), that doesn’t preclude major success in this field.
2024 will probably be remembered for its live service failures, but the year was also bookended with successes. Helldivers 2 was the surprise hit of the first half of the year; meanwhile, NetEase may have cracked the code for making a successful live service game with the Marvel IP, with its hero shooter Marvel Rivals generally getting a very positive response from players in its first week or so on the market.
The things that these successful (thus far) games do need to be considered alongside the factors that drove other titles to failure. Both of them have a very clear, memorable personality – the Starship Troopers-style satirical tone of Helldivers 2 immediately sets it apart from almost everything else on the market (another of the year’s hits, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, notwithstanding), while Marvel Rivals sets out its stall with fantastically executed designs for a hero roster that combines fan-favourites with some real deep cuts from Marvel’s comics.
2024 will probably be remembered for its live service failures, but the year was also bookended with successes
These games instantly have a hook; they’re visually and thematically distinct, easy to remember and reference, and immediately recognisable when someone posts a short gameplay clip from them on social media.
They’re also, of course, good games. When we talk about trends and monetisation models and various other factors around games, we sometimes just take the question of game quality as a given – not least because some people on the business side of the industry aren’t all that comfortable with talking about game quality, especially since frustratingly, it doesn’t seem to be something that you can easily improve just by throwing money at it. It’s a source of annoyance and mystery to them that there can be games developed on a shoestring that are hailed as brilliant, and games with hundreds of millions of dollars thrown into their development that are considered to be absolutely terrible.
One of the great risks of live service games, and one that’s consistently underestimated precisely because so many people are discomfited by these seemingly subjective discussions of game quality, is that live service monetisation generally gets in the way of making a game enjoyable, fun to play, and generally good. It’s not impossible to do, as successful games in this space show, but it’s an extra design challenge; making a live service game good is objectively a harder task, and there are actually very few game designers and directors out there who have practical experience of doing so (for the simple reason that there have been relatively few successful live service games).
Marvel Rivals, assuming its success lasts – and at the moment it does seem to be building a solid foundation for ongoing success – and Helldivers 2 are the silver lining to this year’s cloud. They, along with other ongoing live service success stories like Fortnite, Apex Legends, Genshin Impact, etc., show that good, fun games can still work in a live service paradigm, even as consumer cynicism has intensified over the whole idea.
Yet the field of corpses through which these successful games stride cannot be ignored. Adding up the costs incurred in development, marketing, and operation for all the live service games which have failed or announced their sunsetting this year probably gets you past $1 billion dollars – and those are just the projects we know about. That’s an astonishing amount of money thrown away on disastrous projects, which rankles especially in an industry that’s still reeling from a couple of extremely rough years of layoffs and studio closures.
Live service isn’t going away – the sheer amount of money being generated by the big success stories in this space ensures that – but perhaps 2024’s failures, and some careful analysis of the rather more limited roster of 2024’s successes, will really make this into a pivotal year; the point where the tide turned and ebbed, and this business model started being applied judiciously and smartly, rather than being treated as the Holy Grail that would cure all the industry’s ills.