Poll: Is 'Live Service' Becoming an Excuse to Release Unfinished Games?

Unfinished games and to sell you loot boxes, cosmetics and battle passes. A few live service games are great. Most are not.

Once the core game is finished then development just focuses on feature creep. It is really boring most times.

The important word being "becoming". And yes, it's definitely feeling that way. And not even because diablo 4. I wouldn't say it's unfinished, but its lacking with the idea of we'll add over the 10 years. But right now, it doesn't feel like they even have a plan of what they were planning on adding.

I think the method of releasing a game with set amount of content and anything extra being DLC or added to a sequel was not broken, therefore did not need to be side-lined for the monstrosity of live service games most publishers are trying to adopt.

This 'evolving content' rhetoric that we find ourselves embroiled in is becoming simply a product of laziness and greed. It used to be that you get a complete experience then overtime it evolves. Now, its growing to just be broken buggy mess that will get some half-assed content updates. Where it does fit in some cases, it absolutely has no place in others. Yet, due to the stupid success of many, I doubt its something we will see publishers stopping anytime soon.

Free to play, Live Service and Early Access to some degree.

Excuses to release broken games while milking microtransactions and claim they’re work in progress.

It's also an excuse to introduce disruptive and predatory monetization systems

Yeah i think most live service seem to be fairly light on content with the promise of more to come. I don't mind live service games but its getting tiresome how little content they launch with and how broken they may be. Remnant 2, BG3, Starfield and such show how little meat live service games actually have.

As for Diablo 4 i actually think the game has an insane amount of content and you can easily net 100+ hours from the base game alone. It has a really strong lengthy campaign and a solid enough endgame. The issue outside of bad nerfs is the Reddit echochamper hivemind want Diablo 4 to have 1000's of hours of endless content and they want it to be the only game they will only play until D5 with every build possible being meta and equal.

Surprised to hear words like "unfinished" when talking about a game that scored between 86 and 91 on metacritic (depending on console).
Did the reviewers get it wrong? Or are players expecting too much from Diablo in particular?

In answer to the question - I don't think games are launched "unfinished". There are some obvious ones from the past, like FF15 that were definitely not complete, but on the whole I think most games do give you a full experience. I personally don't play a game until all the content/dlc has released - so having limited time content for "live" games just doesn't work for me- I actively avoid them to be honest

Whats with the live service hate? If you dont like them dont play them. Yes they are funded by micro transactions but you dont have to purchase them unless you really have no self control and need them. Sometimes i feel as though modern gamers just need to have a bone to chew on. I myself have enjoyed a few live service games (warframe,never winter nights,destiny 1 and 2 etc) but i never felt that i was being misled or had an unfinished one forced upon me. Maybe i was enjoying myself too much to stop and think about it? I guess if there was no live service games there would be something else that gamers would gnaw on.

@DennisReynolds Do keep in mind BG3 spent three years in early access. It didn't launch out of the gate in its current state.

Yes if done absolutely right then live service can be a success and yes you could really argue that its an excuse to release unfinished ,I don't mind the odd live service game if it feels right for me,I'd much rather though have traditional games tbh ,gt7 is live service and that's I'd say done about right or as near as can be I think, maybe live service will change over the next few yrs as company's try all sorts of different things but I personally dont think you can beat gd old traditional gaming ,will see where live service ends up in the future but yes unfinished it seems is where live service is at ,at the mo

If you would have told me about a game that is continuously evolving back when I was a kid, the prospect would have sounded amazing. It's more a question of intent, implementation, exposure and just the limits of how much time you have for this sort of thing.
I'm currently playing zero live action games, but genshin/honkai as well as ff14 do you fun, I just don't have the time.

I am historically a defendant of live service. It can be done well and to great affect for the consumer. But they are getting outright awful.

The issue, like any capitalist endeavor these days, is that it gets ruined by people/companies who have no understanding of what makes it work and when it makes sense to implement.

I am a long-time Fortnite player. Day 1 on PS4. I bought the first battle pass (and numerous since). It was a model I was okay embracing as it was a) a free title b) a multiplayer title and c) (this is the big one) the BP itself rewarded you for engaging with it by returning to you more than enough currency to continue to engage with it. Had Fortnite been stingy with the rewards, I almost assuredly never would have stayed as engaged as I did over the years.

What a LOT of big companies get wrong is exactly what you're alluding to with this criticism. Something like Fortnite wasn't necessarily incomplete or broken (your personal interest in the game aside). It was a title that knew exactly what it offered. It then used its model to invest in itself and grow to become something much more. Something few could have imagined on launch. And it continues to surprise.

But more and more companies see it as a way to just fix broken stuff later, drip feed content, and dip their hands into consumers' wallets forever and that's about it. Traditional single player titles should not have battle passes. Hell, many multiplayer titles (that includes co-op) shouldn't have them. It needs to make sense for the gameplay and the type of engagement the player base desires.

What's odd to me is that there are some big heavy hitters in the industry that SHOULD just go full F2P + battle pass but don't. And it's bizarre to me. For instance, I truly believe COD should have been flipped on its head years ago. Forget Warzone chasing the Battle Royale trend, COD's multiplayer core should have long ago been released as a PLATFORM for COD content, free of charge. Give away the multiplayer suite in its entirety and release new maps every season, new modes, etc. And if there's still a market for single player? Sell THOSE storyline as add-ons in a sort of soap operatic nature of growing storylines. Just flip the table and deliver stories the way they used to deliver map packs. (And sell cosmetics on top it all to fund the endeavor.) It would keep players even more engaged, and allow them to create a singular space instead of having countless teams with overlapping storylines, gameplay systems, and ***** clogging the brand's identity. How any COD players drops cash on cosmetics that, up until this year, disappeared after a year is beyond me. I have ***** from the first BP in Fortnite that I can display as a badge of honor. That cool COD skin you paid for a year or 2 ago or earned? Just gone forever once the next one comes out. That's bonkers to me.

I think the same could be said for something like Madden or FIFA (or whatever it's called nowadays) where the core competitive nature and seasonal updates would marry so perfectly with the real world sport the titles are mimicking.

It's wild to me that instead, what we get is good, solid games that should never have gone NEAR the live service model "embracing" it and then completely ***** it beyond belief (see: Diablo, Hot Wheels, NBA2K, countless others). THOSE games are the problem and until more keep failing, we won't see it stop.

Live service is an excuse for games publishers to make a store first, and a game way waay second

I wouldn’t honestly say so. The rise of early access on Steam has had much more of an impact on unfinished games than live service ever did. Games like CoD, sports games etc are definitely ‘finished’ on release, they just add content on top of that. It’s more things like MultiVersus that are in early access that feel unfinished to me.

Sometimes but it also depends on the developer and the state of the game but I think subscriptions are a bigger problem for it and will get worse. Take MS for example, they need to keep a steady flow of exciting games rolling in otherwise why is anyone subbed for the year if they don’t feel they are getting the money worth and can just take it out a month at a time. So it’s release broken or skip on features and fix it later.

Let face it it's been going on since games can do updates!!

Live service games is delivering minimum content for maximum profit. Designed so people buy MTX. Drip feeding minimal content, constant patches with nerfs to suck the joy out of playing the game. Game developers refusing to give content or gameplay what gamers want. Games that become online play online. Limiting progress. Putting cosmetics behind paywalls and deleting ingame challenges to be able to earn those cosmetics. They rather take your money. Give us back finished games on release and i'm happy to pay for (good) DLC.

I don't know if "unfinished" is entirely correct, I mean plenty of non live service games release unfinished or in poor states too these days. For most live service games (unfinished or not) I think it's more just the companies try to see what they can get away with, especially with greedy aggressive monetization. If nobody notices or speaks up about it then there's no way any of those companies would fix or change anything later on.

Some will be worse than others. But when you get something like Diablo 4, it just punishes early adopters. Which is fine if you can hang on and get the game later, but from a developer's point of view, those aren't really the people you want to wind up.

They didn't need an excuse to release incomplete games, they were doing that already. The live service part just make it seem more palatable to the masses. It's not incomplete, it's pending the next season!

Otherwise the service exists simply to continuously draw money out of the same product people already paid for.

“Becoming” ? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Since I’m now a Fortnite player, though I’m on break before the next season starts, I can’t go all “live service sucks” like I used to, but it is a green light for unfinished games to be released.

But it’s not just liver service games, there is so much wrong with gaming in general that we all just accept now, like paying $30-$70 to play a free game like Disney Speedstorm, or $60 to start a game full of micro transactions for nearly everything, and macro transactions, and season passes, and whatever has been going on with No Man’s Sky for like a decade now. If “Spore” had released a decade later it might have finally become a good game, but probably not.

FFXVI was great, bought it, played it, traded it in. But that’s the exception today, few and far between. Though GoW:R did it as well, really need to play that, probably safe by now.

More $$$ for less effort, content, features, and quality and STILL more $$$ and control over users' experiences after the initial point of sale; that's the driving force behind "live service" and pretty much every major (especially online) business model pushed by the videogame industry. Look at what's happened to local multi-player features as of late in games like Halo Infinite and Forza; we have the most powerful consoles and largest displays in the history of the hobby and yet the excuse for not including splitscreen is "technical limitations", which is a LIE. It's really because any time players spend offline is time their experience can't be gated, controlled, monitored, or exploited for more $$$.

I find it interesting that some of the best and most played "live service" games are the ones that didn't really start out with that goal.

Fortnite, Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, Call of Duty managed to adapt into it.

A lot of the failures seem to come from diving head first into trying to force it when almost all the big hits got there slowly, or by complete accident.

One thing those developers don't seem to understand is that people won't keep playing a game (or even start to play that game to begin with) if there is not much to it at launch.
You just can't expect people to keep playing something when there is barely anything to play

@Ralizah Right but its still not a live service and on PS5 it never had an early access release.

If I hear that a game is going to have a live service model or anything like it, it is an immediate turn off for me. I could see some of them being a good time with friends, but as a solo player I find them generally too repetitive and/or grindy

This article is perfect timing as I'm having issues with Wayfinder, I bought the early access yesterday and I still can't log in.

I kind of disagree with the Diablo 4 criticism. The 25-30 hour main campaign did have a clear end-goal. So I was perfectly good with the original release in the state it was in. Did the post-release content need more thought? Yes, but the main release was fantastic on its own and has very few bugs. Not a game I would call “unfinished” at release.

And there’s still dozens of hours of content I haven’t played!

Live service often means unfinishable rather than unfinished as they don't tend to have an end point as they are designed to keep you playing for as long as possible.

I honestly think at this point in my life I get more joy out of watching live service games fail than I do from new single player releases im looking forward too.

It doesn't have to be branded "Live service" to be released unfinished. Just look at Cyberpunk.

@UltimateOtaku91 I played 2 closed betas and bought founders pack to and im still trying to get in to. 6197 in queue atm.

I think the fact that it has plenty of examples shows that it’s a problem.

I still haven’t bought Jedi Survivor due to that it’s still janky.

Interestingly Fornite looked nothing like it does now in early reveals, I saw a preview in EDGE like 12 years or so ago, looks like a totally different game, different style, still had the fort building stuff. Then it released and kind of got lucky on the battle royal wave & period where free to play had kicked off. It was all somewhat random and had less to do with how the game was planned but by pivoting to the current moment. I think so many companies look at its success and it drives them crazy.. the most popular game in the world.. was popular because it just kind of adapted on the fly despite what it's original design had been mapped as. It's lead to this kind of goldrush & throw things to the wall and see if they stick mentality "we can make it up a bit as we go along".. but I'm not sure the Fornite formula can be cracked so easily, or ever really cracked again. We'll be getting near a decade of this stuff soon and I'm not sure it's really panning out that well for most who try to get involved. Already feels a bit old hat.

Always has been, insert meme

@ATaco i agree. Pretty much every game released has a day one patch to fix something or add something so i guess we could say every game is released unfinished just some more than others (cyberpunk the most obvious example.) As good as pga the road to the masters is at the moment its very obvious that game was nowhere near a complete release and was rushed to coincide with the masters tournament. Nobodys called EA out on that one! Besides the free to play live service games there have been some damn fine titles such as the division games,the ghost recon games etc and all have been ripped to shreds but still have a healthy user base. So do live service games need to go? I dont think so as they obviously serve a hell of a lot of gamers especially the free to play ones that require no ps subscription which i think a lot of commentors here seem to forget.

Unfinished games seems to be a problem ever since the PS2 finally bowed out.

Day 1 patches are a standard issue these days and some times you have to wait until v1.04 before the game becomes stable enough to not eat your save data.

To me, a live service model is fine as long as the game is 'free to play'. I hate these games that ask for a full price and then ask for more on top of it for all the features that are in F2P titles

@Luvstagrind i agree with this too. F2p games need those micro transactions to survive and grow. Do i like them? No but if the game is free then its a necessary evil and one i can choose not to buy into. Full price releases should not have them to be honest but then again i can exercise my right not to purchase them. I have no problem with the way warzones battle pass works because i can win enough in game credits to purchase the next one if i'm willing to grind it out which i dont have the time for as i'm playing diablo 4 and thats a game that i've got mixed feelings about. I love the game and i dont have an issue with the end game either but i dont like that battle pass at all because you can't aquire enough credits to purchase the next season. Thats disgusting.

It all started when games became digital and patches could be downloaded

This is why i stick to single player games and even then I have to be mindful (ubisoft games)

Yakuza and Judgment games are excellent examples of actual games. You get 100s of hours of content and feel satisfied when you hit 100%

Elder scrolls online

On console, unforgivable. On PC, just another day.

OK hate grinding games like Diablo 4. But for me if a story ends with the base game, then it is complete. Adding extra end-game content does not mean it is not finished. More surprisingly, didn't you give a high score to that cash grab and unfinished game? Why did you give such a high score to it?

OK, so maybe devil's advocate here, but what exactly is an unfinished game? I'll use one of your headliners as my example: Marvel's Avengers. Was Avengers a great game at launch? Probably not, but I'm sure some people liked it - a lot of people loved the campaign. However, was it a finished game? I'd argue, yes, it was. Perhaps the end game design needed a lot more tuning and content in the long run, but I would say it was a quote unquote full game at launch.

I think what you're getting at is whether live service is a title plastered on broken games, and I'd still argue, no. Most of these games were always marketed as live service games. I think designing games meant to be played forever is really hard! Players are always more clever and more dedicated that designers can plan for.

Maybe these games should launch as "Early Access" or whatever, but I think publishers know that gives a certain swath of players pause - like myself.

I wouldn’t attribute the release of unfinished games as a live service issue. There are plenty of single player games that get released half baked, then get a Day One Patch, with more patches to follow.

I think there’s more pressure to get games to market and the fact that a game can continue to be developed and patched after launch is the root cause.

It really just comes down to a case by case basis. There are definitely live service games that release with far too little content and take too long to finally get it going. Then there are some that launch feature complete and the stuff added down the road just make it better.

There are also plenty of not live service games that release in an incomplete state arguably too so I don't think it's just a live service problem necessarily.

@MikeOrator Sports games are so so ready for a live service overhaul.

Release the core game, allow for all sorts of single and multiplayer modes. And then sell battle passes that give players options for things like custom stadium/uniform options. It'd keep players engaged long term. Make it about creating an actual, thriving sports team for yourself.

Have stats and records wipe and update a few times annually, to mimic seasons and off seasons.

That ***** would sell truck loads, no gambling or anything required.

there isn't much left to say on this topic. we have given our opinions on it for years and yet nothing seems to be changing. i don't know if people are blissfully ignorant or if they simply lack will power to say "no more" but the main takeaway here is: people simply don't learn and enable the cycle to continue by supporting trash publishers and services time and time again and again and again...

@Northern_munkey i just keep continuing to respect your post’s and maturity towards the industry. Without needed to be said, i will repeat the obvious, games from all genres are releasing in states that should be way better. It’s not a model, it’s the fact games take a LOT of money and time to make and make right. Inpatient CEO’s (Ex Bethesda) were on purpose rushing dev teams to make a date so the suit’s could cash out and either leave or just get their bag cause they clearly don’t have a huge passion for games or the gamers. I personally like the live service games cause we aren’t seeing sequels pop up 2-3 years later normally. So this model gives me more content and updated content to keep me engaged to games i like and want to continue to play (Diablo 4) so while gamers love to get on their keyboards and complain about something, cause saying negative things makes them feel smart, i for one still have loads of appreciation for the industry and the time it takes these dev’s to complete games and be away from their family and friends for long long work weeks. I wish there were about 2000 more people like you all in one forum so we could have civilized conversations, without brand, genres or sales being the focus point of these threads.

"It always has been"

@RobynAlecksys and you obviously did not understand anything i said at all. If you are going to have to try and have a go at me at least try and understand what i've written. I'm not for the live service games or against it. I can see both sides very,very clearly and you are jumping on the "predatory" band wagon trying to make your self relevant..talk to me properly if you wish to discuss my opinion or just press the ignore button 👍

@HonestHick as always thankyou buddy 👍

@Northern_munkey thanks for speaking out and truthfully bud. The industry is a mess and needs reason and truth. I am not here saying dev’s are without fault. But i have gained 250 plus hours of fun on my Series X with Diablo 4. I’m happy with where things can go from here. Nothing is perfect, on any platform. But i am happy with my 3 consoles and even debating to plunge on a PC.

@HonestHick i built a mid range pc around 10 years ago and i had a lot of fun with it. What i didnt have fun with was the never ending upgrades required to play the games at a high level. Pc gaming is a really cool experience and the grin factor is great but you need deep pockets. Once gpu's started costing the price of a ps4 upwards i lost all interest in pursuing it as i would have to give up my golf membership and i cant live without my golf lol. If you do decide to go the gaming rig route i hope you enjoy it but i'll just stick to my ps5 and the golf course..

@wiiware This is why live service games are terrible, they're there to be a money making machine first.

@Northern_munkey we had this talk before. I have outdoor hobbies also. Hunting and fishing. EXPENSIVE….i just love my PS5, Series X and Switch cause they work. But i would love to throw money at performance if it didn’t come with all the hassles of drivers etc etc. if it was as simple as pay for power, sure. PC gaming is far more complex than that. I will get the PS5 Pro, and any Xbox upgrade. Cause fishing and hunting is hundreds of thousands. I try to stretch my indoor and outdoor hobbies to the best quality i can. I have some nice setups, but i am lucky to make ok money and not have debt. Otherwise i would be in trouble. Man you are just a great dude. I will share something with you in public i normally wouldn’t. My dad loved Football and golf. He played football in his younger years and then went DEEP into golf in his latter years. Won some local tournaments and spent good money on it. Got cancer and passed in 2009. I suck at golf but anyone that likes it and talks about it brings me joy to my fathers passion. Keep swinging, and thank you so much for all our conversations.

@HonestHick thanks. I'm up keeping an eye on my dog bear as he has hurt his mouth so he has to go and see the vet in a few hours. Also my insomnia has returned with a fury this week (3 nights without sleep so far) so i've managed to get a bit of diablo 4 in as well as a few things around the house before i go to work 😭. Maybe i'll be able to grab a few hours over the weekend before i have to go to work monday morning. Your dad sounds like somebody i would have enjoyed chatting to and i'm sorry to hear you lost him.

Live service is a different, another way to play games, and as gaming evolves, having options is a good thing. Though personally I have zero interest in them. The important thing is how it’s implemented, just like most things in life, there are good ways and bad ways. Splatoon is a great example of a live service game. Marvels avengers is a bad example.

Live service, early access, buggy on release, DLC blar blar, are not mutually exclusive. That being said, live service by its very nature will never have an end game. So releasing in a sub par state is par for the course. It is what it is. If it’s not your bag then there many other options available.

Since this is US Square, a PlayStation site, one does have to question Sony’s dipping their toe in the market. They have a model that works and is highly profitable, messing with that will not work well for them. I believe Sony are at a crossroads. They’ve been following the Nintendo route for a while now but seem to be in the middle of a fundamental shift. The future is uncertain.

@Northern_munkey - “well, we’re waiting”. One of the funniest films ever made.

@JaxxDuffer judge smails...legend

Becoming? It has always been that way.

Selling people on bright promises, like "It will be better in the future" or "it will get much better in time" - one of the oldest tricks in commerce and politics alike, that 95% of the time end up much shorter that the masses were led to believe.
Utter shame we have to face it in gaming too...
But since gamers don't stand united, don't have a union that can represent them, and there are scarcely any laws for this entertainment form, all publishers can do pretty much what they want with their games... as Metallica said : "sad but true"

Diablo 4 released as an unfinished game, with a ton of bugs at launch, quite a lot of which are not solved even today.
Take Elemental Resistances for example - a mechanic that exists in the game since the beginning, but is still useless even today, especially when comparing it to DR.
Everything that was fun in this game, they nerfed to hell and back again, until only the barebones and the endless senseless grind remained.
End game content is still spartan even today, the game slows drastically after lvl 50, and becomes utterly boring after lvl 70-75.
Unfortunately, they made so much money with D4 selling us empty promises, that even if the game flops in the future, it won't matter much to them.
And there is no direct competitor for now that can force Blizzard to do better.... the full release of Path of Exile 2 for example, is 1 year away, minimum (Beta is in June 2024...)
But at least come September their servers will be much emptier, as soon as other epic games launch (Starfield in September, Lords of the Fallen and Spider-Man 2 in October etc).
Though I don't think that will make them properly fix the game either...
It seams Blizzard learned nothing from past mistakes.
For Diablo 3 it took 3-4 years for the game to become fun, after the initial team left and another one picked up the pieces, and released the Expansion and all the content that followed.
I wonder how long it will take for Diablo 4 to go through the same process...

Look no further than Battlefield.
Paid expansions in Battlefield 4 and previous entries were absolute quality, and a juicy bit of content.

Ironically though I remember at the time a lot of negative PR from gaming press and YouTubers around splitting the community etc.

Now we have the absolute car crash that is 2042 and the dropping of BFV once it actually started turning a corner, all for this awful trend of live service.

Shallow content, and less of it.

Live services is the worst thing to happen to gaming.

Absolutely. Live service is the most sinister way of "game" making. They are all designed first and foremost to sell skins, passes, etc, while engagement baiting, FOMO, etc. They're a poison to this industry.

Unfinished games have existed since the beginning of gaming. It’s just now they have the ability to go back and fix them.

@Northern_munkey thank you, sorry about the dog. Sure hope you can get some sleep. I used to do all nighters back in the day. These day’s if i did one day without sleep, i would be a zombie and not very functional. Yeah you would have liked him. He had ton’s of clubs and his own golf cart. Watched it on tv, played it as often as he could. Golf is a good game, great hobby that you can enjoy early or late in life. Hey when the young kid’s get mad at your post and say you need to touch grass we can tell them that our outdoor hobbies touch plenty of grass. Haha bad joke!

@HonestHick thanks. Bear is ok. He bit through his own gum chewing something the daft sod so he's had an antibiotic injection. I managed to grab a couple of hours kip earlier on but i'm not sure i've benefited from it 🤣. Enjoy the rest of your weekend buddy 👍

It's all games........ Publishers force Developers to release games in broken/ buggy states.......... That's the reason why you get massive patches on launch days for new releases

@Northern_munkey Agreed.

@CroCopTeam ok 🤔

The term "Live service" game is if you actually think about it is snake oil. The concept on paper sounds amazing but in reality an impossible task, hence being snake oil. A lot of these live service game's solo purpose is maximum profit over content the secondary purpose. Paid DLC will always have a ton of more care and work put into the content over a live service game, where the only extra money comes from is microtransactions which becomes the main focus. It's a bad business model.

I feel like the fact that this was even posed in the form of it being a serious question that should be debated and not just a soapbox article about how live service is one of the many cancers in modern gaming just illustrates how bad the problem has gotten... smh

As Shigeru Miyamoto once said: “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”

I think this maxim is still true even in an age of instant updates. I can’t think of one live service title that was crap at launch that eventually became something actually worth playing.

Even the poster boy for post-launch updates. No Man’s Sky was still a good game at launch; it just wasn’t what was promised. That’s a very different thing. If it wasn’t for Hello Games’ push to make it better it would have been another indictment of entitled fans.

It’s not only that, gaming industry is like any other industry out there, they release a v0 (most profitable product) with the bare minimum to measure success and collect data. Once they analized the data they decide whether to continue or not. It could be a live service or not but in the end its all about profits, they don’t care about the gamers community at all, take a look at the latest port from Rockstar 🤷‍♂️

@bippity_bop i'm surprised that you even had to mention it. Pushsquare are very good at publishing these little "bait em'" articles but its how "we" as a community respond to them. When i first joined it was not that bad in all honesty but over the years these type of articles have become more common place. Sometimes i often wonder if pushsquare actually understand how their members feel in the first place when these kind of questions have to be asked. It is good to chat about things like this granted and its hard to stay patient when the inevitable rabble rousers post the comments deliberatly designed to inflame those that try to discuss things rationally. Stick around for a while longer and you will eventually develop a level of cynical thinking you thought you would never have 👍@solocapers edited to include "pessimism" as well.

Honestly, its not even "live service" games that are like that.

A large proportion of games these days are unfinished on release thanks to digital marketplaces largely replacing dvd/blu ray.

Just wait till subscriptions are the dominant way of getting games. You'll get titles that are broken in to chapters and released based on performance KPI's being met. Doesnt meet consumer engagement? Then chapter 1-3 is all you'll get and the rest is shelved.

Just wait until everyone realizes how farcical the live service system is with attracting & retaining players: publishers & developers don't need a QUANTITY of players, only a QUALITY of players. They don't need 10k players when only 200 of them are the whales driving the funding. They just need those 200 players. Thus long-term content isn't king like we would assume ... just long-term items that interest the whales.