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.
It’s so funny Bungie is still going forward with Marathon. What’s the audience there? Tarkov players who also liked Destiny?
One thing’s for certain, the target audience isn’t the fans of original Marathon, or young people who would have been.
The corporate impulse to reanimate a cult classic into a grotesquely misguided attempt at mass appeal after 30 years of peaceful repose