Some Modern Examples:
Concord lasted two weeks.
Babylon’s Fall didn’t make it a year.
The First Descendant lost 97% of its players.,
skate. is fading fast, and its Steam reviews only recently clawed their way out of “Mixed",
Skull and Bones has probably shut down
KTLJ is a trainwreck, same with Gotham Knights
Even Marvel Rivals, the most “successful” newcomer, has dropped 90% of its audience since launch.
Marathon looks to be a failure
The “forever game” era also gave us LawBreakers, Battleborn, Anthem, and others that didn’t even make it past 1 or 2 years
Games built to be “forever experiences” are dying faster than the single-player titles they were supposed to replace, If live-service gaming was ever sustainable, we’d have more than a handful of survivors left.
What’s the basis for this? Just because the market segment is saturated doesn’t mean it’s inherently unsustainable.
And while there’s plenty of failures to point to, there’s also a fair few successes of the past few years, particularly on the gacha scene. I think this is more wishcasting than anything else.
The fact that gacha games are a thing at all depresses and confuses me greatly as someone who was offended beyond belief when games first began having the audacity to ask money for shit like weapon skins 15+ years ago
I was mortified when I learned that the anime horse girl racing game has different monthly spending limits depending on how old the player is. Jesus pissing Christ, why does a fucking bideo game need spending limits, why do people play this garbage, why is this normalised AAAAAAA
horse armor, mobile games, that one fucker at EA, and their consequences