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.
Yeah, cancelling this seems like a good call.
Lmao. GoW live service? Fucking hell it’s video games by committee.
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.
I can’t imagine how it sucks to being these devs. They obviuosly earned more and lived better than me, but I’d have a hard time parting with some project even if they are all mismanaged unborn messes.
I was a professional developer in a wide range of gaming areas for about 20 years… Looking back, I can honestly say that 95% of the work I did ended up as a vapor… The 5% that made it to market were so fleeting…
I derived my satisfaction not from completing projects, but solving the underlying problems. That kept me very engaged.
But yeah, not everybody sees things this way.
Why did they make an expensive game like Concord which nobody wanted? Don’t they have market analysts or something like that? Everyone was able to tell them beforehand that it will flop.
They probably started it at a time when analysis suggested it was what people wanted more of, and then during the probably what; 4 or 5 years it took to develop, interest waned?
I don’t think it was weird that they started on this; it was pretty weird that they didn’t pivot or cancel earlier.
Afaik they started development when overwatch was already successful. By the time development finished the hype was over and players had moved to other genres, and had very little interest in an overwatch clone.
Until Marvel Rivals showed it could still be done but you needed a very specific game for it.
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.
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.” 🤤🤤🤤🤑
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.
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.
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.
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.
You want to make money? Let bluepoint make a bloodborne remaster and bring it to PC.
Like, make the obvious good and profitable decision.
I feel like it’s the same 12 people loudly asking for Bloodbourne.
But hear me out. Battle passes, dark patterns and FOMO.
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.
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.
About as good as Castlevania being a pachinko game.
cancelled God of War sequel
“That’s bad!”
Live service
“That’s good!”
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
Good! Wonder what trend the brain-dead CEOs are going to chase after now. Cozy games?
Since games take 5+ years to make now we’re probably in for a wave of metaverse products.
Ooh, this seems like an excellent guess.
I think they’re going to jump ship for straight up gambling apps. That seems like the growth area now.
Just ask “what is making money” to get the answer. It’s still live service and gacha shit, but I’m sure they’ll try to add machine learning to it somehow cause you gotta have that
They’ll ask the AI what to make then ask the AI to code it and use AI art.
Platformers.
Especially if Silksong comes out this year. I could see a board memeber pointing at it saying, “IF THAT FLAT GAME CAN MAKE A MORBILLION DOLLARS, WE CAN MAKE ONE SO FAST AND GET SO MUCH MONEY!”
But then someone will remind them “sir…that’s what mobile gaming is”
GoW as a live game isn’t the most out there thing. Tens of people liked the multiplayer mode in Ascension (?) and the reception to the roguelite mode was generally very favorable. And the core game already had gear based progression that could map to something like what Ghost of Tsushima has (that has hundreds of people who like it…).
But having frigging Bluepoint spend cycles on this? I am sure that the studio asked for something more than just remakes but… what?
I don’t think it at all matches “Never ask me about my past” Dad Kratos and nobody likes Atreus enough, but one could easily imagine an “open world” live service game where new gods and factions are added every few months and you do quests for or against them.
