7 ‘Live Service’ Games that Died Extremely Fast, RIP

I'm pretty sure at this point Square Enix has shut down enough Live Service games in the last 12 months to fill it's own dedicated top 7 list

Live service games are a plague.

I remember when EA said "No one plays single player games anymore" and sitting there thinking "Guess I'm no one, then." There are so many live service games that were successful and continue to at least be moderstely so, but it seems a lot of devs and publishers can't see what made games like Destiny so successful in the first place. It's also interesting to note that having a single player campaign/vs bots can go a long why to increasing an online games popularity and life

I remember at E3 people were playing Evolve for the first time and kept dying to the nature before seeing the monster.

Splitgate being on this list was a great example of this not always being a bad thing. Splitgate stopped development because the developers did so well that the game simply wasn't designed to accommodate their ambitions anymore, and they left to give us a full-fledged sequel instead! And they made sure to incorporate things like map creation tools before they stopped development to ensure that the game would continue to have life after official updates ended. Stroke of brilliance, that, and Splitgate is still great fun to play to this day as a result.

I remember this one person on Anthem who was in charge of the lighting for the cutscenes, and they told everyone else to make sure everything else in the cutscenes was finalized before they "baked" the lighting, because that was NOT getting redone after it was finished. Time and again, folks said everything was final, no changes, so they did the lighting, and time and again, it turned out there were changes. That's why the finished game has cutscenes that refer to things that didn't even happen in the story. They happened in previous story drafts, and then someone changed the plan.

My biggest gripe with Anthem was how it helped tank Andromeda (developers left ME:A to work on anthem) and how it has slowed DA4 to a crawl. We could be waiting for “Dragon Age 6: The Mages are At It Again!” Next year, not DA4.

The concept of games that get updated over the years with new content is great. Its amazing how much game companies screwed that up.

I remember when Anthem had a brief 36 hr period where loot was "broken" because the amount of loot earned was like 3x the normal rate and the game was actually enjoyable.

When a publisher talks up a full-priced game's longevity before launch, start the timer.

I remember in Anthem they did match making for some (or maybe all) of the story quests, so you'd jump in and if a player or two had already done it before they'd rush ahead and start doing everything and the game would warp/rubber band the players who were trying the quest for the first time to keep up. It was such a weird design decision.

It's always a bit sad. Even if the games are predatory and bad, it's still thousands of hours of real people working hard.

Splitgates fall was unfortunate, but it fell in such a graceful way that it can’t be called anything less than tragic.

Once you realize Turtle Rock's solo achievements include Evolve AND Back 4 Blood you also start to realize how hard Valve carried their reputation for a decade.

One of my first experiences with a live service game being discontinued was ChromeHounds for Xbox 360. It had a persistent battlefield that changed. I played that game a lot online and was devastated when it was discontinued.

Gonna need to make more room for S Squad: Kill the Justice League and Skull and Bones at this rate. 😂

Can I suggest an opposite of 7 games that still keep adding content to old games in contrast? There's some real long term projects out there and most of them are awesome. Edit: Tons of suggestions and I agree with all of them honestly. I'd like to mention Lord of the Rings Online myself. The game will be 15 years old this year and it still gets additional content multiple times each year with festivals and community events. It's very similar to World of Warcraft, but I think it has more pleasant graphics, a better storyline and a very committed community that keeps the game alive.

In my experience, "Live service" is just code for "we didn't finish the game and want to fleece you for all we can," and if anything, I see this list cementing that outlook. I'm not really a fan of the games you mentioned at the start, but at least they did a lot to keep players interested.

Get ready to add Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League in a future episode.

My live service game that taught me never to buy into online-only games was Blur. Had such a good time playing it and servers just went down. Copies can be still found online, but it simply cannot be played