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.
Are there other “lifetime” games out there that weren’t originally made with that intent? I can think of Counter Strike as a good example. CS2/CSGO (I’m counting them as the same game) is 13 years old now and is still hitting new revenue peaks. Last year alone the skins brought in $1 billion for Valve.
Warframe is another successful example.
They just keep going because people keep playing.
TF2 is still going strong as well from what I’ve heard, their all time player peak was like 2 years ago.