The Live Service Model Needs To Die

[viprit]

Fallout 76, Destiny 1 and 2, The Division, Anthem, Battlefield V, Battlefront 2, the last 4 COD games. There's so many examples that show that the games as a service model needs to die off. This terrible model has convinced publishers like EA, Bethesda and Activision that its ok to release unfinished messes of a game at launch and then fix it over the next few years with DLC and updates.

Well it's not ok. Anthem is a game thats the epitome of live service games. Buggy, rushed, unfinished products with no care put into them. Anthem has really shown why this model needs to end. It's ruining gaming. Remember when we used to get finished content packed games at release? What happened to that? It's like Rockstar and CDPR are the only AAA companies that do that nowadays.

 

[McPhee]

On the other hand, so many great games exist because of this model, while others have been saved from disaster or had their useful life extended because of it.

Sounds like you're complaining about the wrong thing TBH. The problem is unfinished games, not the method of funding.

 

[Angilion]

On the other hand, so many great games exist because of this model, while others have been saved from disaster or had their useful life extended because of it.

Sounds like you're complaining about the wrong thing TBH. The problem is unfinished games, not the method of funding.

I think the two are inherently linked. The live service model pretty much requires games to be released while incomplete - how else can devs get people to continue paying over and over again after the game is released? Content has to be removed so it can be sold seperately later. In addition, the game has to be deliberately flawed to get people to pay more money later to counter those flaws. That's what the "carry on paying" model is all about - the game must be just about good enough to play at the base price but bad enough to get people to pay more to make the game less bad. That model also greatly encourages releasing bugged games. Fixing bugs before release is expensive and time consuming - you need to pay people to playtest the game and that means more money and much more time (because you can't be paying a very large number of people). Far better to not bother and use your customers as playtesters - you don't have to pay them, in fact they are paying you! The only drawback is customer dissatisfaction and that no longer matters because it's become the norm. The only choice customers have is to put up with it and keep paying or stop gaming.

 

[NoobCannon]

All these battle royal games are what need to die.

 

[Rroff]

The Division is for the most part a good game - but frustratingly falls short of being a really epic game because the developers won't spend the time on what it needs.

 

[Malevolence]

All these battle royal games are what need to die.

I know, it's terrible. What, with people holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play them and all.

 

[llamadal]

Welcome to the forums, please don't come back.

 

[Columbo]

All these battle royal games are what need to die.

Why exactly? What does it matter if there is a BR game released every week?

The same argument could be made for MMO’s, Pixel Art games, 3rd person shooters etc. Just play what like and stop worrying about the stuff you don’t like.

 

[Kiyoshi]

Thread Titles Written Like This Don't Belong On This Forum.

 

[Semple]

Frankly i think it's because people's expectations are so high.

Lower your expectations a good amount, and most of those games you mention won't actually disappoint you.

Part of that means not pre-ordering games at full RRP, or maybe not even buying them at launch and waiting a couple of months for early bugs to be ironed out.

A lot of AAA titles have had their prices tanked over the last 6 months. Take FO76, the game has a number of flaws and bugs that still exist, but for sub £10, i'd guarantee you'd get a good enjoyable 100 hours of gametime out of it.

 

[SS-89]

On the other hand, so many great games exist because of this model, while others have been saved from disaster or had their useful life extended because of it.

Sounds like you're complaining about the wrong thing TBH. The problem is unfinished games, not the method of funding.

Agreed if done well there is no issue with it. The problem is the majority have launched half-baked. Division and Destiny 2 have subsequently turned it around. Got high hopes for TD2 being a big fan of the original and hoping Anthem turns it around as I enjoy the core gameplay loop.

 

[cheesyboy]

On the other hand, so many great games exist because of this model

For real? Which are the good ones?

I know nothing about it - I don't play any of them, they all look terrible. I hate dealing with loadouts, loot, costumes and other players. It's not for me.

 

[Tombstone]

For real? Which are the good ones?

I know nothing about it - I don't play any of them, they all look terrible. I hate dealing with loadouts, loot, costumes and other players. It's not for me.

I think there would need to be a definition of what counts as a Live Service game.

I mean, as an example, with its constant updates and content drops, you could consider Path of Exile to be a Live Service model. A title which is a resounding success and could be argued is the best of its genre.

So I think we need to consider what defines Live Service. If its simply that the game has continual expansion and content added to it through its lifetime then I can think of several games which fill that definition and are superb games.

 

[varkanoid]

Remember when we used to get finished content packed games at release? What happened to that?

Sorry when was that ? I must have missed that era in my last 40 years of gaming.

 

[DampCat]

I think the two are inherently linked. The live service model pretty much requires games to be released while incomplete - how else can devs get people to continue paying over and over again after the game is released? Content has to be removed so it can be sold seperately later. In addition, the game has to be deliberately flawed to get people to pay more money later to counter those flaws. That's what the "carry on paying" model is all about - the game must be just about good enough to play at the base price but bad enough to get people to pay more to make the game less bad. That model also greatly encourages releasing bugged games. Fixing bugs before release is expensive and time consuming - you need to pay people to playtest the game and that means more money and much more time (because you can't be paying a very large number of people). Far better to not bother and use your customers as playtesters - you don't have to pay them, in fact they are paying you! The only drawback is customer dissatisfaction and that no longer matters because it's become the norm. The only choice customers have is to put up with it and keep paying or stop gaming.

I don't think that's fair. No game has to be released unfinished. Look at older games such as HL2, the story was complete and then they shipped expansions. StarCraft and Starcraft 2 continues to sell expansions. Civilization games continue to sell expansions. Hell even The Sims are finished games that continue to sell content long after shipping.

The quality has been slowly dropping. Like Early Access was a good idea in theory, to provide capital to an encouraging product. In reality it just funded lots of non-starters (not exclusively, obviously there have been some gems). "AAA" Games started to get shipped to fit specific release windows and suffered with some bugs, but that's ok because they supported the game and patched it and everyone was happy. Then, like early access, it kind of opened the doors to continuing that to higher extremes.

Now people are paying full price for a long demo. I mean if we're being totally honest with ourselves, the games we played off the front of magazines were shorter, buggier versions of the full release. But we didn't pay for it.

It's actually totally turned me off gaming. I hardly game at all now. I play Civ 6, Baldurs Gate 2 and Apex Legends which I'm sure I'll give up on as soon as (like hearthstone) the meta requires me to continually pay to keep up. I had no hype looking forward to Anthem and lo, it's a horrible mess.

 

[StarShock]

I think as with all things there are shades of grey. There are certain things that games as a service can do that wouldn't be workable otherwise, and some really good examples of companies doing it correctly, but a whole lot of bad examples.
For me the problem is that certain companies seem completely incapable of moderating them selves and will squeeze every last piece of money they think they can out of any new trend and they seems to have gotten very efficient at leaving them dead or dying.

It's not perfect but for me the thing that needs to be gotten rid of is shareholders. EA and their peers are no longer in the business of making games, they are in the business of making money for their shareholders. The games are only a side effect, and they have shown that they are more than happy to get rid of the games if they can continue to make the money.

 

[Angilion]

I think the two are inherently linked. The live service model pretty much requires games to be released while incomplete - how else can devs get people to continue paying over and over again after the game is released? Content has to be removed so it can be sold seperately later. In addition, the game has to be deliberately flawed to get people to pay more money later to counter those flaws. That's what the "carry on paying" model is all about - the game must be just about good enough to play at the base price but bad enough to get people to pay more to make the game less bad. That model also greatly encourages releasing bugged games. Fixing bugs before release is expensive and time consuming - you need to pay people to playtest the game and that means more money and much more time (because you can't be paying a very large number of people). Far better to not bother and use your customers as playtesters - you don't have to pay them, in fact they are paying you! The only drawback is customer dissatisfaction and that no longer matters because it's become the norm. The only choice customers have is to put up with it and keep paying or stop gaming.

I don't think that's fair. No game has to be released unfinished. Look at older games such as HL2, the story was complete and then they shipped expansions. StarCraft and Starcraft 2 continues to sell expansions. Civilization games continue to sell expansions. Hell even The Sims are finished games that continue to sell content long after shipping.

You're talking about older games, back when paying full purchase price got you a full game. Those were not games sold as a service. Games sold as a service are as I described. They're also merged with the "freemium" model, which requires a game to be "just about good enough to play at the base price but bad enough to get people to pay more to make the game less bad" because otherwise far fewer people will pay more. Only they aren't even honest about that - they charge full price for a "free to play" game.

I think as with all things there are shades of grey. There are certain things that games as a service can do that wouldn't be workable otherwise, and some really good examples of companies doing it correctly, but a whole lot of bad examples.
For me the problem is that certain companies seem completely incapable of moderating them selves and will squeeze every last piece of money they think they can out of any new trend and they seems to have gotten very efficient at leaving them dead or dying.

It's not perfect but for me the thing that needs to be gotten rid of is shareholders. EA and their peers are no longer in the business of making games, they are in the business of making money for their shareholders. The games are only a side effect, and they have shown that they are more than happy to get rid of the games if they can continue to make the money.

I think that's a good point. It also means that it's impossible for them to make enough money. No matter how money they make, they must make more because the economic model being used is the "cancer" economic model - constant unlimited growth. Of course it destroys companies, but the people profiting don't care because they'll already have planned to dump it and move on the the next host.

Jim Sterling recently did a typically scathing video on the subject. I'd provide a link, but there might be some Naughty Magic Words in it so I won't. The title is "CAAApitalism: The Successful Failure Of Videogames (The Jumquisition)"

 

[Mart2912]

I think as with all things there are shades of grey. There are certain things that games as a service can do that wouldn't be workable otherwise, and some really good examples of companies doing it correctly, but a whole lot of bad examples.
For me the problem is that certain companies seem completely incapable of moderating them selves and will squeeze every last piece of money they think they can out of any new trend and they seems to have gotten very efficient at leaving them dead or dying.

It's not perfect but for me the thing that needs to be gotten rid of is shareholders. EA and their peers are no longer in the business of making games, they are in the business of making money for their shareholders. The games are only a side effect, and they have shown that they are more than happy to get rid of the games if they can continue to make the money.

This is fundamentally the main problem. There is far too much money involved in gaming these days. People who have most of the control yet know little to nothing about video games, their only concern is money, at any cost. Buggy, rehashed, rushed, loot box riddled dlc gaming is what we are mostly left with. Minimum effort for maximum profits. I feel sorry for the people who are developing these games, who may have/had passion about the game they make but get told to skip x y and z because they don't have enough time or because they will hold back features/content for the next release.

It's frustrating. You can see the potential in most of these games, yet get let down because of poor decisions (*Cough* Star Wars Battlefront 2). Love Star Wars, love Battlefield, yet they had to **** it up somehow.

 

[chrcoluk]

Fallout 76, Destiny 1 and 2, The Division, Anthem, Battlefield V, Battlefront 2, the last 4 COD games. There's so many examples that show that the games as a service model needs to die off. This terrible model has convinced publishers like EA, Bethesda and Activision that its ok to release unfinished messes of a game at launch and then fix it over the next few years with DLC and updates.

Well it's not ok. Anthem is a game thats the epitome of live service games. Buggy, rushed, unfinished products with no care put into them. Anthem has really shown why this model needs to end. It's ruining gaming. Remember when we used to get finished content packed games at release? What happened to that? It's like Rockstar and CDPR are the only AAA companies that do that nowadays.

Rockstar is definitely game as a service, GTA5 all single player DLC cancelled and constant MP updates, RDR2 will be the same.

The amount of proper triple AAA devs left doing complete single player games is limited.

Nintendo is just about the only AAA dev thats unaffected.

 

[Freddie1980]

Remember when we used to get finished content packed games at release? What happened to that? .

Er no. Maybe during the Atari 2600 days when games were simple but even then they messed up with games like E.T.