People say they're sick of live services, but the successful ones are still doing hella numbers. Execs have seen how much money Marvel Rivals is making and they want a piece. I think the real problem is that they've become so saturated. Most gamers already have one or two live services they're hooked on, and these games demand so much of your time that they're not going to fit another into their rotation. Do people truly hate live services, or do they just hate the ones they're not currently playing?

Live services also come with an expectation that they have to be a massive megahit overnight or else they're dead on arrival. All or nothing. With the budgets that get poured into these games, the only way to get a return on investment is to hit it big big big. I have a lot of opinions the way gamers throw around the word 'dead' to describe any multiplayer game with a less than Fortnite-sized playerbase, argumentum ad SteamCharts has done irreparable damage to gaming discourse, but it is a sad truth that a lot of modern multiplayer games can't just find their niche and be comfortable with that.

And I say all this as someone whose favorite multiplayer games have a matchmaking system that consists of just pitting you against whoever's available, or even a Discord server where you ping a matchmaking role and hope someone responds. A modest little indie game can sustain a tight-knit community that way, but it'll never fly for a big budget live service. I have games I love dearly that I can't actually recommend to people because getting matches can be a chore that I doubt most of you want to deal with.

This then leads to this self-fulfilling prophecy where a live service with this kind of anti-hype train is what seals its grave. Live services are an investment to get into, but it's already been pronounced dead, so don't sink any cost into it because no one else will. I have games that I've enjoyed but couldn't justify putting money into because the future looked too uncertain, which is exactly how they ended up dying.

Maybe there's even a bit of us vs. them, because market saturation has made the fight for an active playerbase so cutthroat, people don't want to see a competing title risk siphoning players away from their preferred game. I've even been there too, my favorite game of all time dropped off because another game came in and split its playerbase.

But mostly, I think a lot of people just like shitting on the new target of the day without even thinking too hard about why. Making fun of a flop has always been a popular gamer pastime. I've seen this sort of thing happen all time time, dating back before we even had the term 'live service'. TORtanic is the one that immediately comes to mind for me, the one people made such a big deal out of that they had to come up with a funny name for it. Anyone remember that?

A big feature AND problem with the live-service market is that gamers STAY engaged with the games. The majority of players play your random RTS for a few weeks, maybe a month, and then move on. But these live service hero shooters keep pumping out content to keep players invested and build in a ton of engagement sinks so you won't leave.

As a result, you can't have "The next Marvel Rivals" like you had "The next Command and Conquer" or "The next Battlefield", because everyone is still playing the current Marvel Rivals. That results in a completely saturated market. If you want a player, you're going to have to drag them away from their current game, which they're comfortable with and have a massive investment in.

If you're releasing the next Assassin's Creed, you don't need to be amazing, you just need to wait for people to finish the last one and deliver something pretty nice. Maybe it's better, maybe it's worse, but the field is empty so who cares. For Live-Service, you don't just need to be better than the rest, you need to be sufficiently better that all the players are willing to abandon their huge investment in the other game and switch to you.

And well, your game might dissapear any second, while their game has been around for years and surely will stay around foreeeever.