The Death of Live Service Games

Games as a Service have become increasingly popular over the last 25 years, branching out into all genres of games, today I wanted to take a look at the ups and downs of this trend, and talk about The Death of Live Service Games.

00:00 Every Live Service Game Dies... When It Does, It's Gone
03:10 Games As A Service: A Brief History
10:02 Why Live Service Games Got SO POPULAR
15:33 Live Service Games Are Fraud
19:06 What's Next? The Future of Games as a Service

[ForceGamingYT]

Something I forgot to touch on in the video is how much all of this ALSO sucks for the Developers. You know, the people who actually make the games. Imagine spending ~5 years of your life building something from the ground up, only to have it abandoned, and erased from existence by your Publisher because it wasn't making enough of an ROI.

If you want to shut things down and spend your money elsewhere, sure, I get it. Business is business. But to Thanos Snap it off the face of the planet? What a bummer for all those involved in creating games.

[pongo-]

Abandonware laws need to actually become a real thing for preservation and consumer protection.

[theritchie]

"Piracy is almost always a service problem, not a pricing problem" - Gabe Newell.

[scabby.knees]

The problem with games that hypothetically never end is that once people dedicate their free time to one or two, they never have enough time for a new live service game. There's simply not enough market share for the majority of new live service games to profit without insane levels of marketing and funding

[MahalGC]

Hopefully in the future live service games are legally required to go open source after they've sunsetted for a period of time, as it is a shame that there's passion in fans to keep a game alive but the original devs can say no to it for any reason.

Or every game should be like Valve games, where you can feasibly host servers of your own regardless of Valve's availability.

[billyelliotx]

Why I've started turning back to retro games. Plenty of games and console systems I've missed over the years. Plenty of good games to choose from. And at the end of the day, I own the game on my shelf. I can pop it in (as long as the media doesn't degrade or hardware doesn't die) and play the game. No online needed, no daily logins, no microtransactions. It's great.

[roughknight]

I thought for the longest time I wanted to play grand multiplayer games like WoW, SWtoR, and ESO after experiencing Halo 2 multiplayer as a teen; and after dabbling in all of them as time has gone on, I found myself most content with playing Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 the last year. I don't have much time nowadays, but putting in 200 hours into a 20+ year-old franchise and playing at my own pace while knowing there will be an end is euphoric.

[underthemayo]

I've never known this pain because I've always been so single player focused, but I know are millions out there that play these kinds of games and while it is sad to see them lose support, they should at least leave behind infrastructure for the players to continue. And if they don't, seeing players do it themselves and then suing them is so disgusting.

[VideoGamingSociety]

As a developer myself I understand really well how much blood & sweat goes into every software project, especially HUGE ones like AAA games. Sadly, what you end up with is your years of hard work being used by the business like a goddamn toilet paper... Seriously, fuck corporations man!!! 😡😡😡

[ShawnBiddle]

I really only have an issue with this for games which are single player. It obviously doesn't make sense that a company must maintain a multiplayer server in perpetuity and in many cases it's simply not possible. However games that have no multiplayer or only optional multiplayer, IMO, should _always_ be playable offline. On top of this the "You need to create an account and log into our launcher to play this offline, single-player game." needs to die in a fire.

[Oni]

Thanks for highlighting this issue. This has actually been a long time coming, since the early days of MMOs at least. I don't know what the long-term solution is (there are many possibilities) but the current environment is extremely anti-consumer, so buyers need to be very aware of what they are spending their money on. Anything that requires a server-side connection to play (even if it's just a DRM check) is likely busted once that server is shut down. We've seen this already in game modes no longer available in games.

Technically, you can take this one step further with game venues like Steam and the Epic Store--we're in age right now where consumers don't actually own what they paid for--just because it's software. Shifting game delivery to online from physical shifted all the power into the publishers' hands.. Federal law is severely behind on pretty much all facets of the online economy, so gamers need to watch out for themselves, especially in the days of $70 releases.

[mastring]

This is fixable if we can get our US reps to do something. If we can get a law passed that "if you produce a game that requires online access to play the game, and end support and close down your servers. Then that game is now in the public domain and anybody can spin up a server and do anything they want to update and patch the code.

[sk]

Force, you brought me the feels. Sierra On-Line. Police Quest. Space Quest. King's Quest. The Imagination Network with Shadows of Yserbius and Red Baron. Leisure Suit Larry. Those were the days. Need a hint? Call the hint phone line for like a buck a minute. Need a patch? Email the company from your Prodigy account and they'll send you a patch disk in the mail. Legendary. Ken sent me, indeed.

[SuperHns]

the sad part is, you forgot to mention probably, IN the past PC games used to have dedicated servers, that you could rent and would keep a game ALIVE, but for some reason the publishers take it on their own to host servers and force you to log in with them, so they can just pull the plug and your product will become useless.

[frontline]

Man I really do think this is the most important issue facing the gaming industry today. Not enough people talking about this. There needs to be legal action to make things change.

[Indigo_Gaming]

Always nice to see a fellow Evolve fan. There are dozens of us! *Dozens!*

[memetic_hazard]

I love games like Monster Hunter and Dark Souls where you can always play offline and get 90% of the gaming experience but playing online can offer you more. Sure, the servers may eventually shut down (RIP Dark Souls PtD Edition) but the fundamental game will still be there.

According to your definition they are technically live service because they do continue to get updates for some time - DLC for the souls games and free content updates plus MTX cosmetics for MHW and now MHR. So I'm hoping that live service games in the future will be more like this than the turds we're currently flooded with.

[Saefogeo]

Here in Spain, if any kind of intelectual property is not available to purchase in any form legally (like let's say an anime that has not been officially and legally released here) you can't be sued for any kind of intelectual property violation if you get it by "unofficial" means.

Maybe it could be a good idea to set private servers for all those abandoned online games here 😆😆😆

PS: I'm not in any form or grade a lawyer, what I said above could be (and probably is) absolutely wrong. It was just a comment 😜

[Daaamson]

Asheron's Call was such an amazing MMO even by todays standards. The fact that they had an entire Patron system where the tutorial of the game is literally another player helping you, giving you hand me downs, and as you level, they gain some of your XP. It created a healthy community and gameplay loop where players would literally show you secret dungeons etc.

[rickdalton]

What about Rockstar/Take Two? Put them on the very top of the list. Red Dead Online continues to sell/push gold bars, or in-game currency, for a game they have stopped supporting. The game on PC is almost unplayable due to hackers and other glitches. They need to stop selling gold bars to fans who don't know any better. Why is a multi-billion-dollar industry allowed to manipulate and scam their audiences? The game released in the summer of 2019. Are they really allowed to just immediately end support to their live service title only ~2.5 years after release, push steam sales, and still push gold bars? Laws need to be in place to protect against bad practices like this.