Over the years, there’ve been various red flags in gaming, for me at least. Multi-media. Full-Motion Video. Day-One DLC. Microtransactions. The latest one is Live Service Game. I find the idea repulsive because it immediately tells me this is an online-required affair, even if it doesn’t warrant it. There’s no reason for some games to require an internet connection when the vast majority of activities they provide can be done in a single-player fashion. So I suspect Live Service Game to be less of a commitment to truly providing updated worthwhile content and more about DRM. Instead of imposing Denuvo or some other loathed 3rd party layer on your software, why not just require internet regardless of whether it brings value to customer?
What do you think about Live Service Games? Do you prefer them to traditional games that ship finished, with potential expansions and DLC to follow later?
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Live service games/ games a service are an automatic no from me. Too many have little to no content, constant delays on content, a dying community, or ridden with predatory monetization. Not to mention I dont like to pay for games that i cant play when the servers go down.
Butnot a problem in free to play games, not in full price gamesIn anno 1800 (which is the only game I’ve played with denuvo) it still needs to have a connection to the ubisoft servers to run, so live service isn’t just about dodging 3rd party drm
That’s terrible. :(
No and I think it’s kind of silly that people find the mention of the term so upsetting. Content aside, I like multiplayer games. I’ve been playing them for years. The idea of a multiplayer game that gets content updates is nothing new. CoD (just one example) has been doing it since 2008 and I’m supposed to be upset with that now that the big chunks of content they release are free and it has a different term describing it?
Like I said, just one example, but that’s generally how it goes. And you’re free to buy whatever cosmetics you want. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been one for microtransactions and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything because skins I’ll probably never use are up for sale. Which is the flip side to more complete content packs being sold.
Also, the idea that games are unfinished simply because they’re offering more content is weird to me.
Multiplayer games are great. I think the upsetting part is that from the word Go, whether it warrants being a Live Service Game or not, it implies an expiration date and an online-only requirement. When I bought Overwatch, I never heard them describe it as a LSG. Maybe they did and it just didn’t register. What I know though is that having bought 2 copies, one for PC and the other for PS4, I cannot play those games now and in their place is a reportedly substandard product (one I didn’t pay for or ask for).
So now I have this game which I loved and still played occasionally is gone because the publisher made a decision to expire it arbitrarily (read: to get people to pay them more money).
Overwatch could’ve run on player driven servers. Much of this stuff can. That might only serve a few thousand or few hundred people 10 years after launch, but that’s the right thing to do.
Doesn’t annoy me in the least bit. I think most gamers are whiny and entitled the second something isn’t 100% catered to them.
I don’t have the time to play live service games. The next time I play a game it might be completely different? No appeal to me at all
Live service comes across as life service. A game made to monopolize my time and become a significant part of my life by using addictive systems. By the very nature of enjoying the variety of games, it will immediately turn me off a game.
“Service Games”, gotcha games, games with excessive DLC (looking at you sim games), internet required and Denuvo games are all hard passes.
It’s actually gacha games
feels the compulsion to make that correction
Sounds like they got chya, hon.
Eh, no big deal. The only one I don’t care for on your list is day one DLC. That always seems sketchy. plenty of game I’ve gotten into had day one for me DLC, but that’s cause I joined late, like rimworld. That was a hard DLC package to swallow. If I lived somewhere that I didn’t have good internet I could see caring more, but that’s rare enough to be written off by developers.
At least with Rimworld you can pirate the dlcs and add them to the Steam copy with no issues.
That’s what I ended up doing since I’m poor. I saw a comment from the devs on the torrent thread basically saying they’re just glad you’re playing it and to consider buying it if you’re able to in the future. Seeing that pretty much solidified them as great devs to me, and when I actually have some disposable income I’ll end up buying them just because of that.
I just stopped buying main stream games for the most part. Indie games is where it is at. Often better gameplay loop and comes at a better price and I would rather see my money going to creative people instead of some greedy CEO.
Live service is a no from me.
Well said, I definitely lean towards indie with the occasional Fromsoft/Larian/Bethesda purchase
I don’t have the long term attention span demanded of live service games, since once I’m done with a game I move on.
Op, I think you’re a little confused. I can’t think of a live service game that isn’t a multiplayer game in some form. the required online is because that’s literally what the game is.
Be mad about the scummy lootbox practices that prop it up, don’t be mad that other people like online games.
“in some form,” being the key part of that. Someone mentioned Diablo 4. It doesn’t have to be always online. Gran Turismo 7 is another example. It’s a trend.
I mean, there are examples where the multiplayer should be optional and thus force the game to be live service. For instance, Diablo 4 should be perfectly playable single player, offline, yet it’s live service and to my understanding requires an Internet connection
I simply don’t buy live service games. I hate them
Unless it’s an MMO, or something like an online aRPG, the tag “live-service” immediately means that you’re fully expecting to release an unfinished game, collect your preorder money, get backlash for the game being unfinished garbage, and then release a few patches as a “Sorry we got caught” excuse.
The days when you’d buy something, and you would know that is the final version of your software, have been over for a long time
The days when you’d buy something, and you would know that is the final version of your software, have been over for a long time
That sounds like a good thing to me. The real problem is that when buying a game, there are no guarantees about how finished it is.
The point is that when you printed something on a disk, and had 0 capability of pushing patches down the road, you were forced to finish your product. Now it’s not the case, evidently
In theory yes, but in reality, plenty of games shipped unpolished in the physical media era.
You are completely correct
I’ve been playing a bunch of old NES and SNES games, and they all could use a few patches. Many are buggy as hell.
They were still cranking out unfinished trash back then because the cover art and box description was all we had to go by. No refunds on opened games, your money was gone and you had no hope of it ever getting better.
I’m not a fan of it. I think live service games generally comes with battle passes, which are essentially preordering DLCs. DLCs that have not been announced, with no details and nothing else. They also often offer some exp bonus or in game items. I think this has an impact on how the game is balanced. The bonuses can’t be game breaking so they have to nerf the base game experience to make it “valuable”.
I think it can be done well if the base game is free. Dota 2 and csgo are good examples of it because the bonuses that come with battle passes are mostly cosmetic, and they help the support game development. If the base game is £60, then the company can fuck off. I prefer standalone games with expansion packs being released at a later time. Being able to play offline is also great, even though I am rarely without Internet access.
