In the graveyard of live service games Concord may just be the biggest headstone, and that seems to have focused some minds over at PlayStation. Previously the noises coming from Sony were all about the importance of live service games to its future strategy, and it had announced plans to launch more than 10 live service games by the 2025 fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2026.
Now? Not so much. A new Bloomberg report reveals that “following a recent review” PlayStation has canceled two unannounced live service games in development at subsidiaries Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games. Bend is best-known for Days Gone and, back in the day, Syphon Filter, while Bluepoint mainly handles high-profile remakes like Demon’s Souls.
While playing the single player masterpiece which was God of War, I absolutely thought: “The only way to make this game better is if I had the luxury of buying a battle pass to grind for seasonal cosmetics along with a dozen other people.” 🤤🤤🤤🤑
Lmao. GoW live service? Fucking hell it’s video games by committee.
This was inevitable as soon as games started getting the budgets of blockbuster movies. No one wants to invest that much money into a project without getting some oversight and control in return.
Of course, very, very few people who have access to that kind of cash have any design sense whatsoever, and even fewer understand the creative process, or what makes games “good”… so they ask for shit that they think will be “safe” money-makers, and we get what we get: endless, samey, soulless shlock.
Live service deez nuts. Shitty trend that needs to die.
Live service games generate a constant income with minimal effort once it’s live. It will only die if players stop spending money on such games.
You want to make money? Let bluepoint make a bloodborne remaster and bring it to PC.
Like, make the obvious good and profitable decision.
But hear me out. Battle passes, dark patterns and FOMO.
I feel like it’s the same 12 people loudly asking for Bloodbourne.
A God of War live service game? Who the fuck signed off on that? I’m glad the article was able to zero in on the blistering stupidity of such a thing.
Yeah, cancelling this seems like a good call.
So the fuckers can learn!
The more canceled live service games the better.
Make a real game or don’t bother.
god of war live service? wtf???
cancelled God of War sequel
“That’s bad!”
Live service
“That’s good!”
Stupid question, but was is a live service game?
Its the definition of “you dont own the game”. You pay to get access to the service of playing the game and it wants to keep you playing as long as possible so you spend more money on micro transactions. They are constantly updated, usually as some form of “season”, have daily login streak bonuses, etc. And after 2 years the game shuts down and you have nothing and can’t play anything you paid for anymore.
Every live service game that fails or gets cancled is a good thing.
online multiplayer bullshit with monthly fees.
Monthly fees optional. These days I’d assume the battle pass model is more common.
Like a subscription base game? World of Warcraft and other alike?
no it’s like fortnite or cod. They’re usually quickplay multiplayer games with a low cost to entry, infinite grinding potential, and microtransaction hell
Yeah, theoretically the exact model for monetization isn’t as important, but many publishers are hoping to get players to pay subscriptions indefinitely.
Basically a game that is continuously updated with new content. Lots of different models of it from MMOs to Fortnite to Diablo IV. Many of them are free to play with lots of microtransactions. They usually feature things like seasons and battle passes and loot boxes. They’re almost always heavily monetized. The competition in the “genre” is incredibly fierce since most people probably only play a handful of them and friend groups usually all want to be on the same game. It’s very hard to break into. Sony announced that they were making a big investment into the area a few years ago and news has been trickling out since that most of them have been canceled.
The worst thing about a live service game to me is that they only work when you can connect to the official servers. Many live service games have shut down and there is no offline mode to continue playing. Sometimes you still pay full price for these games. Sometimes games like The Crew, shut down after you spent money to play it and then The Crew 2 comes out so you pay full price for essentially the same game and the first one doesn’t work anymore.
I don’t even know what a God of War live service game would be like but I can’t imagine it would be good.
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It would certainly be weird, after their recent games were so story-driven. You can’t tell a good story, if you need to always keep the end open for possible expansions.
Thank fuck now more effort can be put elsewhere instead of live service slop.
All I read here is that there are still 8 too many live service games in development. Are execs addicted to gambling or what? Because that’s exactly what live service game development is. Also I would like to know what kind of research they are doing that indicates that more live service games is what the market wants, when people who play them rarely ever switch once they find the one they like and at this point there are entirely too many of them.
Live service games that become successful can make billions of dollars, so everyone is trying to be the next big one. Having a ton of concurrent live service projects is the “throw shit at a wall and see what sticks” strategy. They expect most to fail but hope that the 1 that succeeds makes up for it and then some.
Hence why I called it gambling.
Bend is best-known for Days Gone and, back in the day, Syphon Filter
Are we just gonna pretend Bubsy 3D never existed?
Damn. Bubsy 3D to Days Gone. What a redemption arc lol
