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[Draugoth]

Games as a service have always existed. Before they were just called MMOs. Microtransactions were originally envisioned in the 2000's by Korean developers.

Concord failure can be attributed to a number of factors:

• Took too long to release, overbloated budget
• Extremely bad first impression
• Releasing in a saturated market
• Pandering to LGBTQ+ audiences when it's know these audiences are very small in gaming.
• Unnapealing game design.

Most PlayStation players are interested in high quality single player games, unless you manage to release something spetacular like Helldivers 2, most people wont bother.

 

[cormack12]

The problem is new live service games generally have front loaded interest (if they even manage to capture an audience) before the players gravitate back to the handful of powerhouse titles. It's the same reason why WoW probably only has one other title of stature in its space (and doesn't necessarily cannibalise its own users).

Has a GaaS ever dethroned one of the big boys? Not really. You may get lucky and carve off a sliver of player time for your own title, which means you're really looking for something new to make a lasting splash. Which is why Horizon would be a good bet, and exactly why Concord was not.

Factions also would have been a good bet imo despite it being canned. Look how much hype The Day Before generated alone as a Division-esque zombie MMOTPS.

 

[YuLY]

The most profitable games are live service.

They are also the most costing if they fail. A game like Callisto Protocol might not have made its money back in the first year, but games sell on steam for DECADES, thats the power of PC a true full compatibility device, and eventually theres no way it wont earn them more revenue than initially invested into.
In the end a failed SP game might turn profitable and worth keeping it on stores for years and years as a publisher, but if a GAAS fails it is done, you cannot keep selling it since the servers are down and no bots/offline option for most of them.

GAAS is a double-edged sword.

 

[ReBurn]

Sony have Helldivers and GT7. if they'd any brains the concord studio will focus on content for Helldivers.

There's room for one more GAAS from Sony I'm just shocked they didn't back the Last of Us to be the one.

After seeing the content in Concord the last thing Sony needs is to have Firewalk making content for Helldivers 2 or any other game. Sony should take the gameplay devs and move them to other studios, but people involved in game and character design probably need well wishes as they embark on the next adventure of their career as the studio's doors close for good.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

The most profitable games are live service.

If they succeed. The OP gives multiple examples of games that didn’t. Given large investment and necessary scaling to support GAAS content if the game flops it’s over for the studio.

 

[hemo memo]

I find it funny that “too big to fail” strategy for Sony didn’t work with Concord.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

The most profitable games are live service.

in not sure about that.

maybe the most revenue generating ones, profitable? nah.

 

[Saber]

I sure hope so. Specially the ones that uses games to promote social stupidity.

 

[AGRacing]

I loaded the demo up on PC a while ago. Played I think two rounds? But no buy.

I’m done with games that use pronouns. I am raising a kid with autism. I’ve seen what I’d call an “effort to confuse” aimed at those who could perhaps be more easily confused. The last few years have opened my eyes up to this reality. I’ll never support it.

If you put “they/them” on the screen.. or encourage me throw a beard on a person with tits… I’m out on your game. You need my money…. but I don’t need your “sweet baby” bullshit.

 

[deriks]

This system will never end, but the woke shit was big enough to taint the game and ruin it for them specifically

And I hope people learn and no game will ever do this anymore

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

I hope it does for Sony at least but I doubt it will with Marathon and FairGame$ on the way. Sony has about two or more epic trend chasing flops in them before they abandon this boat.

 

[yurinka]

Concord flopping = The end of the live service trend chasing​

What do you think the next trend will be?

There are so many threads about it because future historians will point to this game being the pivotal point of the end of the live service trend chasing.

Concord is significant to gaming history precisely because it was such a hard flop.

You're desilusional. Following that logic, non-GaaS games should no longer exist because there are way more that tanked in these 50 years of gaming.

GaaS are the top grossing and most played games, so publishers will continue investing on GaaS:

And they are not a trend, they have been there for a couple decades and year after year they represent a bigger portion of the game userbase and revenue, particularly thanks to mobile and F2P.

Publishers won't stop investing in GaaS because some of them tank, in the same way they don't stop making non-GaaS even if some of them tank.

Sony have Helldivers and GT7

And Destiny and MLB, which also are very successful GaaS.

 

[Astray]

Redfall
Sega's Hyenas
Square's Foamstars
Ubisoft's Skull and Bones
Suicide Squad

And now Concord.

With Concord being an even harder flop than even the most staunchest of haters could have imagined. It sends a clear signal to the gaming industry that live service trend chasing will no longer work.

Similar to past trends from: military shooters, to tacked on multiplayer, to plastic peripherals, to everything being a battle royale.

With Black Myth being such a blow out success with about 80% of players being in China. I suspect the new trend will be single player games chasing the Chinese market.

What do you think the next trend will be?

EDIT:
I corrected Foamstar with Square instead of Ubisoft.

The First Descendant
Wuthering Waves
Zenless Zone Zero
Helldivers 2
Marvel Rivals (likely)

Are all live-service games that came out this year and were able to find a sizeable audience just fine.

So the answer is clearly no.

 

[Gamezone]

How about making live service games that people want? The Day Before was top1 wishlisted on Steam for a long time before people were scammed. How about making something to replace that?

 

[Astray]

How about making live service games that people want? The Day Before was top1 wishlisted on Steam for a long time before people were scammed. How about making something to replace that?

Following the lead of literal scammers isn't a W lol.

 

[reinking]

Don't forget HellDivers 2 was a pretty big hit so its not the live service trend in trouble

Its the Hero Shooter with agendas shoved down our throats by Professor wannabes that should die in a fire

Exactly. I think people are taking the wrong lesson from this. Live service is not going anywhere. You can't fill a game full of characters that the mass majority of people can't relate to and expect it to do well. The best case scenario is that it gets enough of a following to be niche.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

As long as a game like Fortnite will continue to have 3 million daily players and multi billion annual revenue, other companies will keep trying to be the next success story like that.

Yup.

Every corporation looks at sales charts. And there's two rows they always look at first. First row: Their own product row. Second row: Which competing product has the #1 spot.

And every exec, marketing manager and sales director looks at who is #1 and drools what if scenarios what can be done with people and budget to gun for top spot.

With Sony having a super successful H2, their chart looking adds another dimension. They have H2 setting a high bar so expectations are internal GAAS to match and beat those 12M copies too.

 

[clarky]

The First Descendant
Wuthering Waves
Zenless Zone Zero
Helldivers 2
Marvel Rivals (likely)

Are all live-service games that came out this year and were able to find a sizeable audience just fine.

So the answer is clearly no.

Difference is the ones you listed are actually good games, the ones you quoted are trash, thats why they failed its that simple. No different than the non-GAAS space.

Make something worth playing and people turn up. Who would have thought?

 

[Astray]

Difference is the ones you listed are actually good games, the ones you quoted are trash, thats why they failed its that simple. No different than the non-GAAS space.

Make something worth playing and people turn up. Who would have thought?

But isn't that essentially the same thing that happens with the single player games as well?

Good ones tend to thrive (some don't for various reasons), bad ones flop.

It's honestly the exact same thing when you think about it.

 

[poppabk]

Poor Exoprimal. Didn't even get remembered as a Live Sevice flop.

Also Redfall wasn't Live Service, just adding co-op MP sank that ship.

 

[simpatico]

Better yet, was Concord so bad that it's going to get Fairgame$ canceled before it launches? I think it should. We all know it's another Bomba in the making. Hell even just letting those devs go to work tomorrow is a 5 digit expense. I say send a late Sunday evening email relieving them of their duties.



Sony is dumping thousands of dollars into this each and every day. 6 figures per week just in salary and overhead if I had to guess.

 

[HL3.exe]

Until the trend does enough damage, which it still hasn't done, and the ones that succeed in the Live Service space rake in all the money atm.

Live service games aren't the problem: Mobile in-app spending and the way it transformed (or mutated) consumer behavior, the way premium developers have to compete with that + the unsustainable dev cost, are the problems.

 

[Bridges]

Redfall wasn't live service, it was just a shit online co-op game.

The only content drops it got were bug fixes lmao

 

[clarky]

But isn't that essentially the same thing that happens with the single player games as well?

Good ones tend to thrive (some don't for various reasons), bad ones flop.

It's honestly the exact same thing when you think about it.

Absolutely in fact i said as much just a bit earlier in the thread.

GAAS are not a trend, they are just another format.

Its like saying is the trend in single player games over now xx flopped.

 

[Kerotan]

After seeing the content in Concord the last thing Sony needs is to have Firewalk making content for Helldivers 2 or any other game. Sony should take the gameplay devs and move them to other studios, but people involved in game and character design probably need well wishes as they embark on the next adventure of their career as the studio's doors close for good.

Sake the diversity hires and get the rest working on Helldivers.

 

[dorkimoe]

just like with the stock market, by the time you want to get involved its too late. It takes way too long to develop a game these days, so chasing a trend is pointless as the trend will be something else by the time youre done.

 

[ProtoByte]

I suspect the new trend will be single player games chasing the Chinese market.

This would be just as bad and fail even more often than the current live service spam we have now.

The appeal to the Chinese market with Black Myth is the fact that it's based on a Chinese myth made by a Chinese team. That's it. There's nothing crazy about its quality. Why didn't Chinese gamers show out for a countless slew of better AAA single players despite having the access to them? Even as far as Black Myth goes, it's one game in a sea of live service/gacha nonsense. There are more Genshin Impacts than there are Black Myths, and the Chinese market is more predisposed to playing League than touching anything SP from the west.

 

[Laptop1991]

I wish it was, but no it isn't, the corp's will still keep trying to find a popular one no matter how many fail unfortunatly.

 

[Raven117]

Yeah, nah. As much as I would like to say “the evil has been defeated” the dollar signs are just too tempting.

The trick will be to find a style of game that can fit into GaaS that hasn’t already been done.

Fortnight/Destiny/CoD (and a few other b-teamers) have alot of the traditional genres covered. Maybe that’s why helldivers 2 did so well. It was a third person, low commitment lots of fun version.

There may be space to go for the gap destiny is leaving now that it’s on the decline. (If Sony wasn’t in Bungies offices last year saying make a destiny 3, they are crazy…). Marathon… man… It’s on notice right now. Like…. Damn man… they may need to cut bait on that.

But, for all it’s faults, Destiny is a lot of fun to play… and has a balance of both single player and multiplayer that few, if any studios, can balance at the moment.

(This is the same trend line that made everyone want to make MMOs after they saw what WoW was making).

 

[Diddy X]

lol you fucking wish

Spoiler

and so do I

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

I don't think it'll be the end of the live services thing, but I think it'll prompt people to start questioning the extreme DEI slant.

That said, I don't think people should be putting so much emphasis on the success of Helldivers 2. Yes, it did very well... but it tailed off hard. Execs want these live services games to live for like 10 years - if you look at it from that lens, I'm not sure how successful they actually think the game was. Again, not taking away from its huge traction at launch, but the expectations are very different than for traditional games and there's an expectation that these titles will carry the business in future years.

People also keep repeating Jim Ryan's whole bit about "we don't expect them all to be hits." Well, yeah. They expected some duds, but nobody greenlights a game with the expectation that it could, for a 9-figure investment, deliver less than 300 active players before its launch weekend is out. That's not a scenario that anyone plans for. And the track record beyond this and Helldivers 2 is... what? More bombs, cancellations, and imminent bombs. Whatever Jim Ryan might've said, I promise you that they didn't plan on having one short-term hit and then the entire rest of the catalog absolutely shitting the bed and losing them billions in development funds.

 

[SkylineRKR]

My guess is all projects currently in the pipeline will flop. Especially if they are developed with a similar structure and mindset as Concord, which is likely as there are probably some demands they have to meet when it comes to diversity and other stuff.

I think a Socom game, with a decent PvE and PvP hook, would've done better than the likes of Concord.

 

[Danjin44]

Unfortunately no. they are too obsess with Fortnite's success and money and they want piece of that and they will keep trying until they get it.

 

[damidu]

one can only hope, gaas is too broad and big of a term though.
at least let it kill hero shooter trend chase

 

[tommib]

Better yet, was Concord so bad that it's going to get Fairgame$ canceled before it launches? I think it should. We all know it's another Bomba in the making. Hell even just letting those devs go to work tomorrow is a 5 digit expense. I say send a late Sunday evening email relieving them of their duties.



Sony is dumping thousands of dollars into this each and every day. 6 figures per week just in salary and overhead if I had to guess.

First time I saw this trailer. Someone needs to cancel this immediately. Concord-level bomb in the making.

 

[BlackTron]

It's obviously a major blow for gaas games but don't expect Sony to pivot so quickly. It was part of their plan that spamming live service games would result in many would not be successful -to find the golden IPs. Will they take lessons from it that will affect the next attempts, absolutely.

 

[Shifty1897]

Fortnite and Warzone are still printing money, so no. Gen Z / Alpha loves live service, it's here to stay for a while.

 

[Evil Calvin]

How about stupid fucking people quit giving live service games $$$$$ then they will go away.

 

[RCU005]

Live service games and streaming services are the same.

When Netflix was the only one around, it had practically all the content, so people would get a lot of content for a small price, which is very valuable. Then, companies started to notice so they separated from Netflix to start their own streaming services. What they didn't realize (or didn't care) is that once you remove content from Netflix, Netflix becomes less valuable for consumers, and the small content is not valuable on its own. It's like a slice of cake.

Today the entire entertainment industry expect consumers to pay the price of the entire cake for their own slice. Which is ridiculous!

Live service games are similar. You get one extremely popular game, and everyone spend money on it. So every company want to make their own GaaS game. Then, they expect consumers to pay the same amount of money for each one as they did when they only had one. So, as the number of games increase, the capacity of players to spend money on reduces significantly (even with whales). You could argue that they want people to focus only on THEIR game and no others, but with many options nowadays, it's impossible.

Then add to that, the poor economy everywhere, price hikes, inflation, and all that. It's ridiculous that companies literally expect people to choose to pay for their games, than housing and food.

 

[EverydayBeast]

You’re going to see games bomb

 

[Nydius]

Publishers chasing live service games are like degenerate gamblers who spend their entire life savings on lottery tickets (or at the video poker machines) who believe they just need one jackpot to be set for life.

They won’t stop until the reach rock bottom. Maybe the Concord flop is rock bottom for Sony and they’ll move on. But they’re just one publisher of many.

As for Square… that’s the company that was talking about going all in on NFTs. There’s no hope for them.

 

[Lumpyoatmeal]

Redfall
Sega's Hyenas
Square's Foamstars
Ubisoft's Skull and Bones
Suicide Squad

And now Concord.

With Concord being an even harder flop than even the most staunchest of haters could have imagined. It sends a clear signal to the gaming industry that live service trend chasing will no longer work.

Similar to past trends from: military shooters, to tacked on multiplayer, to plastic peripherals, to everything being a battle royale.

With Black Myth being such a blow out success with about 80% of players being in China. I suspect the new trend will be single player games chasing the Chinese market.

What do you think the next trend will be?

EDIT:
I corrected Foamstar with Square instead of Ubisoft.

The money Black Myth is generating doesn’t come anywhere close to what live service game companies like Valve and Epic Games are making. Not only that but Valve is getting a %30 cut of Black Myth’s money on the PC. Live service games isn’t stopping at all.

 

[Unrivaledx88]

Just play games that you think are fun , lmao yall to worried about Live service . I come in here to read how dumb yall are making these threads.

When they stop making new games yall gonna complain and wonder why .

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Few people are playing Helldivers 2 right now.

But that one game made Sony way more money than they lost on Concord. They will continue to believe they just need to crack one major success.

I hear that for months and the game is still top 20 in the usa best sellers every month and was #5 most played game in the US on PC. This was in july.

 

[FunkMiller]

Nope.

The market is large enough to sustain a few very successful GaaS games.

But that's it.

This won't stop idiotic game executives continuing to chase the GaaS dollar though - and failing dismally.

 

[Cert.in.Death]

Concord is apparently neither exceptional nor is it terrible. But neither was Warframe when it first arrived (nor was Destiny and FFXIV).

GaaS is a permanent mainstay.

 

[ByWatterson]

I hear that for months and the game is still top 20 in the usa best sellers every month and was #5 most played game in the US on PC. This was in july.

Yeah I mean it's got a steady audience of about 20-25k. It's doing fine.

But for a little while it was dominant. And that brief period plus a nice little tail (for now) is already enough to make up for the catastrophic failure of Concord.

 

[peek]

Just dont make shit games. Problem solved. Its not how a game is monetized being the problem... its shit games. If concord had amazing character designs that people instantly fell in love with... yeah those numbers wont be so low lmao.

 

[simpatico]

A problem is the way some companies are set up. Sony and MS are both arranged in such a way that they must fight for complete gaming dominance. Anything less would be a very expensive failure. They have to take these moon shots to account for the breathtaking spending. There is no other way to balance the books long term. A smaller company like FromSoft or CD Projekt can be content releasing a profitable banger every 4 years. Nintendo is actually in this group. They don't need total global saturation to balance their books. Just consistently profitable drops. I don't think Sony and MS can sustain with simple profitable projects. They need to 100x certain investments to make up for all the duds. Very volatile buisness model, but the payoff is so huge that a lot of people think it's worth the squeeze.

 

[Putonahappyface]

Concord thread number 5,000. For a game that flopped people can’t help but make weird threads about it lol

No, one more failing live service won’t end this trend of potentially making massive amounts of money

It's a perfectly rational human response to shit on something nefarious. Keep the threads coming I say.

Richie Aprile: Like the pimp says to his hoes, keep em cumming.