In the first weeks of 2023, we observed with surprise —well, actually not that surprised— multiple studios announcing the “death” of at least a dozen games as services or ‘live games’, some of them quite high profile. Although this kind of news is becoming more common, its notable increase seems to indicate a change in trend for the industry. We’ll also look at why Games as a Service shut down or come to an end.
Apex Legends Mobile, Battlefield MobileCrimesight, CrossfireX, Echo VR, Knockout City y Rumbleverse these are just some of the games as a service that will soon be gone. Only SquareEnix has terminated or announced the end of the service for half a dozen ‘live games’ in recent months: Babylon’s FallBravely Default: Brilliant Lights, Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds y Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier.
Although Chocobo GP y Marvel’s Avengers they will not stop working, they will abandon all their ‘live’ elements. Back 4 Blood It wasn’t necessarily such a game, but the announcement that it will not have more new content It is also related to the issue of why the ‘live games’ or games as a service close.
During the last decade, the video game industry had convinced itself —and tried insistently to convince us gamers— that ‘live games’ were the future. This recent “purge” or shutdown of games as a service has led many to believe that this trend is coming to an end. That’s right?
Let’s start at the beginning.
What are games as a service or ‘live games’?
We already talked about this topic beforebut it’s worth going over. These are titles —usually multiplayer— that receive constant updates that add content after their release. They are not to be confused with games that simply receive DLC or patches. The essence of games as a service or ‘live games’ is
Many consider that the game that sparked the fever for this type of work was World of Warcraft. With its patches, expansions and sale of cosmetic items, WoW he accustomed his audience to constantly expecting news. Seeing the enormous economic success it had, many studios took this model outside of the MMO genre. Valve was one of the promoters of this style with titles like Counter-Strike y Team Fortress 2. League of Legendsfrom Riot Games, and Farmville, from Zynga, they finished popularizing this kind of games.
In addition to constant updates, games as a service or ‘live games’ use microtransactions or subscriptions to offer new content to their users. This kind of monetization has turned out to be very controversial with certain sectors of the ‘gamer’ community, but its effectiveness cannot be denied. It works so well that the vast majority of these games are offered completely free, relying exclusively on microtransactions and subscriptions for financial support instead of sales.
Some of the most popular and successful games as a service or ‘live games’ of the moment are Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, Apex Legends, LoL, Destiny 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Genshin Impact, FIFA, Dead by Daylight, PUBG, Free Fire y Pokémon Go.
Why are games as a service shutting down?
Envying the huge amounts of money generated by titles like Fortnite, LoL y Genshin Impact, practically all the large and medium-sized video game studios decided to jump into the arena with their own games as a service or ‘live games’. Even several independent teams took the risk, unable to say “no” to the economic potential of these monetization systems. During an infamous presentation, Ubisoft described this class of games as “a perfect circle of recurring earnings.”
The result was a market completely flooded with literally hundreds of titles vying for users’ attention and money., especially in the ecosystem of mobile phones and devices. For several years, only the flashiest titles, those lucky enough to go viral, or those with huge financial muscle behind them managed to survive. It was not uncommon for some games to only be available for a few weeks before disappearing. This situation became so common that it stopped being news.
The press only became aware of the closure of games as a service when it was a high-profile situation, as in the cases of Ubisoft when it ended titles like Tom Clancy: Elite Squad, Hyper Scape or the one of blizzard saying goodbye to Heroes of The Storm. The latter was quite a scandal, as it ended an esports scene on which many players depended financially.
The problem is that, generally speaking, all these games want to be Fortnite
There were studies that believed that simply by having a battle pass for sale, their games would become an immediate success. More common were those who could not compete against the ‘status quo’. Most of the battle royale games that have come out in recent years have been doomed to fail. His public potential was already playing Fortnite, Apex Legends o CoD Warzone. For their part, the new MOBAs had to compete against the might of LoL y DOTA 2. Their players have invested heavily in those titles and they don’t have a strong reason to go to another game, even if this one is “better”.
The number of games as a service that have been lost is also an issue from a game preservation standpoint. When these games go away, they go away altogether. Without the servers and the support of the companies behind them, they cannot be played again. They are experiences that are literally lost. Cases like that of Knockout Citywhich promised to let its players manage their own servers so the game wouldn’t die, are incredibly rare.
The end of the gold rush?
The frequency of news about games or ‘live games’ that will end their service in the coming months have made many think that the industry has finally realized that this is not the future. Many ‘gamers’ have celebrated the situation.
It’s not just about the number of games being shut down by Square Enix, EA and even Ubisoft, which has reportedly canceled at least seven games since the middle of last year and most of them were ‘live games’. It seems that the industry in general is acting much more cautiously towards these types of products.
But that doesn’t mean games as a service are going away. After all, the most financially successful titles are still of this type.. The studios and distribution companies know that they cannot stay without competing within that market, they are only going to change their approach towards it. Instead of trying to outdo Fortnite oa World of Warcraft, they would look for spaces that have not been occupied.
Ubisoft is a company that declared that it wants to take advantage of the power of its franchises for its next attempts in the ‘live games’ sector and some analysts believe that some of its next Assassin’s Creed —probably the mobile game known as Jade— be one in the style of Genshin Impact. The next multiplayer experience Far Cry will be separated from the seventh installment of the saga and you would have a model as a service.
For his part, Square Enix seems to want to put all its eggs in the NFT and blockchain basket. This could be even more detrimental to the industry and one that we hope will not prosper.
What really matters is that popular and financially successful games as a service now will remain so in the medium and probably long term. Fortnite, WoW, LoL, Valorant, Genshin Impact and company are not going anywhere. The good thing is that, apparently the industry is going to stop releasing clones of these and try more risky things.
I wish they had learned this lesson sooner. It was inevitable that things would go this way since we saw the failure of Anthem“a game-as-a-service so great it simply couldn’t fail.”
You know why they close games as a service.
