Publishers Bail on Live-Service Flops Too Quickly, Says Warframe Boss

the problem is trying to get players off the live service games they already play to try and get them onto a new one

sorry i liked Anthem

crazy that it sold about 5 million copies problems with it were same missions over and over and distinct lack of content you can complete anthem in about 10-15 hours

Anthem and Suicide Squad both had incredible gameplay, just no actual variety in said gameplay/lacklustre mission design

market stopped growing, I guess.

this is the main issue everybody is facing in thus business.

People bail on generic live service games as soon as they get announced

He's claiming a game's release isn't make or break, and maybe it wasn't a decade ago when their game came out, but nowadays if a live service fails at launch you're facing an uphill battle with virtually no chance of turning the tide.

The market for these games has reached saturation point, you either release a smash hit or pull the plug early and avoid creating an even bigger financial hole.

@Ainu20 Right. They need to come from a huge publisher like Ubisoft who can afford a big mistake until they turn it around. It's like music artists that can afford to sample a group like Led Zeppelin or The Beatles in their chorus or something.

No Man's Sky and Fallout 76 both had massive launches though which gave those studios the capital to re-invest on improving the games. I'm not sure that the other titles enjoyed such launches (perhaps Anthem excepted, but EA doesn't earn the sh**tiest company award regularly for nothing).

Didn't they close their publishing division and lay off staff after the early access release of Wayfinder didn't make them enough money?

@Ainu20 Hit the nail on the head. 10 years ago Warframe had the space to slowly change into the game it is now (it was dire on release) and have the market to bring people slowly to it. The only reason I ever tried Warframe was because it was F2P and there were almost no other GaaS F2P games out (and I was too poor to buy a game). These days they are everywhere - so much choice that there’s never a need to revisit something old that wasn’t any good.

@Ainu20 yeah this whole comment sounds like when someone in their 60s tells a person in their 20s to just buy a house cash since it wasn’t hard when they did it. Completely out of touch with the current gaming industry. Warframe was one of the first live service games ever. Of course they had time to cultivate their audience as they had no competition. What this guy doesn’t realize is that for new live service games to succeed they need to take away players from existing live service games, which includes his own game. There is only a finite amount of players and the time they have for games so most only invest into one live service game at a time so making a live service game successful means making another one fail.

@StrickenBiged exactly those games saw incredible launches due to overhype in the case of NMS and franchise recognition for FO76. Even a strong launch doesn’t guarantee success. Avengers sold 2 million copies in its first month, it just didn’t retain any of the player base over time. The devs didn’t give up on the game quickly either. It was supported for 2.5 years before being shutdown, and in the end it was reported to have made no money during that time but instead loss $60 million for the publisher. This is why publishers pull the plug on these games quickly because if they don’t they are just bleeding money in today’s market.

I do want to point out one thing though. Anthem was not EA’s fault, at least not in the way you think it is. Ex BioWare devs have come forward since Anthem’s failure and explained what happened. EA gave BioWare complete freedom while making Anthem. BioWare’s management just had no idea what they were doing and said yes to every idea a developer had since the game would come together with “BioWare magic”. These ex developers stated they had no idea what Anthem was going to be until the reveal trailer premiered at E3 2019 because management had no clear vision for the game. In fact the reveal trailer wasn’t even completed until 30 minutes before its premiere. The only thing EA made BioWare do was keep the flying mechanic as that was going to be removed and every person who played Anthem will agree the flying is the best part of the game.

@trev666 I did too! I came to it 2-3 years after release. Barely any other players but I thought it was great - sadly still too bugged to play properly though. Had it the time/market to grow and launched in a better state, it could have been brilliant.

@trev666 Im sure a lot would've loved it if it actually had proper development.

Fallout 76 and NMS sold very well at launch and they always had that USP that kept people around. Anthem, SS and more didn't sell well, had nothing but bad press and they had nothing for players to latch on too. Fallout but online is something people wanted and were excited for and NMS had this huge universe to explore what people were excited for and stuck around for despite an awful launch. Most live services die because they have nothing for people to latch on to.

@DonJorginho Yeah once you get the hang off SS combat it is pretty great but the missions and gameplay loop in general are just so dull and boring that even good combat can't save them.

Only a few days ago there was an article on here pointing out that most new games have no retention in the sales charts.

People stick with what they love, sometimes for decades. Breaking into this market with The Next Big Thing is next to impossible right now.

@get2sammyb For every successful live service game with a rough launch that you can name me, I'll name you five that failed.

This is a game only for those with bottomless pockets.

Different situation compare to a decade ago. Right now live service is an oversaturated market.

And people usually stick with one or two live service games that fits with their taste. If they tried a free beta test for new games and they don't feel they want to invest their time (or money) for that new games then they wouldn't play it, just like what happened with all failed live service games.

@get2sammyb Can't speak for all three games but NMS would've been a financial success even if they immediately dropped it after launch. It generated enough revenue to sustain their studio almost indefinitely.

Most studios don't get that luxury and have to make hard choices, either bank their entire future on supporting their failing live service title, or cut their losses and perhaps get another shot.

His statement is too reductive and dismissive of each studio's unique situation.

@DennisReynolds I'd say that's the real nail on the head right there - USPs and individual character; how well the game stands out from the competition, or how well it largely avoids competition by catering to a different audience.

The games that have survived after bad launches have largely done so because their execution was flawed but the core idea was still interesting and engaging. There's the argument there that yes, some games could have survived or even flourished with more dev time post-launch, but there are also many, many projects that were doomed long before launch just by fault of being too derivative, unoriginal, and too focused on poaching from other another game's playerbase.

a.k.a. the "you can't polish a turd" argument; a game can't be saved post-launch if there's nothing there worth saving.

One could argue that they don't bail soon enough.

In an ideal world publishers would read the market better and fill the various sectors with appropriate numbers of games. Instead they engage in wishful thinking and bandwagon-jumping, and attempt to force consumer tastes towards where they perceive profits.

I wish publishers would bail on live service games before they even get to the development phase.

Anthem could've survived

I think there’s probably a spectrum here of when the “pulled too soon” point is. I think some of these games seem to be holding on too long and some are pulled too soon. For one game, you give it a year and see if it can come off life-support if there’s sign of turning around. For another, pull the plug within the first year and cut your losses.

Concord is going to face this dilemma. The buzz is already trending negative from poor PC beta player counts and so the temptation is going to be to throw it out if initial sales are low.

I agree that some Live Service titles are dropped too early, but I don't think there's a perfect equation of keep plugging away/pull the plug. There are obviously a lot of factors we're not privy to. Like, let's use Suicide Squad as the example: how expensive is it to maintain? Does Rocksteady even know how to improve it? Do they even want to? How many players do they need to make it sustainable? How many staffers do they need to maintain it?

Beyond the logistics of trying to find these games an audience, and a lot of commenter's mentioned this already, are there additional players out there? Can Suicide Squad supplant Warframe, Genshin Impact, Destiny, Fortnight in someone's life? I don't know the answer. I gave up on these types of games because I like new experiences on a regular basis.

Well sure I guess, but if you already lost money in putting out such a live service title, it is a pretty risky move to sink even more money into it, hoping that eventually you will profit off it. What is probably more likely to happen is that you turn a flop into an even bigger flop, when the money you spent on trying to turn around the flop (and thus turning it into the bigger flop) could have been spent on an entirely new project that might actually have a shot at being profitable. Absolutely, sometimes these live service projects are dropped too early, but a lot of the time at least from a financial perspective I would say it makes sense to do.

I mean, if someone actually makes a GOOD, FUN TO PLAY live service game and is willing to not go crazy on how predatory mtx are and not too grindy, people won't bail yeah?

@PloverNutter Oh, I'm fully aware that Bioware wanted to make Anthem - for better or for worse - I was referring more to EA likely being behind the decision to pull the plug rather than stick with it. I can't imagine the devs who put so much time in and presumably believed in what they had managed to make were keen to abandon it so quickly.

@Ainu20 Yeah, but I think the point is, the very nature of a GaaS means it should be built to have a longer tail than a traditional release. Their structure is that of a title that should be allowed to more slowly accrue their sales targets. It's improper/unfair for these titles to have all that effort put into them and then be shut down before they're given the chance to evolve and grow. Which, again, that is the point of these games. How do the publishers release them and not understand these matters?

He's right but the gaming landscape is very different to when Warframe was released, its absolutely over-saturated with live service games and if your game isn't making an impact on release, its pretty much facing a near impossible task to recover from it.

The only game I can think of that was abandoned too early was Anthem, a real shame it wasn't given its proper chance. Nobody is sticking about for generic superhero brain rot like Suicide Squad no matter how many updates it gets, cos why would they? Its nothing special in a market absolutely full of Superhero games.

This is an interesting take imo. But this works only if the new game has an original proposition or vision to get players to play their new game instead of their current live service game. This is the reason why a game like The Finals can survive imo but not games like Concord, Suicide Squad, xdefiant, etc...

@trev666 I loved anthem man. I still have hope they return to it some day

@get2sammyb but you are ignoring the fact that fallout had good brand recognition and sold well.

NMS may not have had brand recognition but it was something different at the time there was less live service games out there.

They were only able to continue because they initially sold well. Had they not sold they would have been dropped.

Not to mention the fact there are far more live service games now that are working well. You release a dud, people try it, realise it’s not very good and just return to the one they like.

@StrickenBiged it wasn’t abandoned quickly though. EA gave BioWare over 2 years to revamp the game post release and BioWare delivered on nothing. They released one small update 6 months post launch and then nothing else for almost 2 years. EA was actually more than fair with Anthem. The ex BioWare devs claimed BioWare weren’t even close to any kind of update when support got pulled so this wasn’t like with Redfall where they were just a week away from a new update. I know people like to act like publishers are the cause for every game failure but that isn’t true. A lot of times devs put something out and have no idea what they are doing. Everything concerning Anthem’s downfall is solely BioWare’s fault.

@get2sammyb the problem is that those 3 games were only critical flops at launch but still financially successful due to pre release hype. The developers gained the capital needed to keep working on those games because they sold so well when they launched. The games this article referenced did not have the same type of success at launch which makes it impossible to turn the tide and make these games successful. The publishers know this and see the money bleeding so they were right to cut support. I know as gamers most of us only consider the entertainment or art side of video games but at the end of the day it is a business and live service games need money to survive. If a live service game makes no money at the start no amount of QOL updates will save it. There needs to be a strong financial base for them to survive long term.

@get2sammyb I'm not even sure that no man's sky is actually a live service game. It was primarily a single player experience that evolved into something quite spectacular and unique. If it is a live service game then it definitely stands head and shoulders above the others.

He’s right about No Man’s Sky, anyway. I just started a new game on Normal Mode and I am enjoying it quite a bit.

These same guys bailed on Wayfinders last year, as well as Amazing Eternals. Their pulp sci fi hero shooter a few years back.

He is wrong they release to little at launch in a terrible state for a way to high price with a to big investment.

One more thing there are just to many liveservice games for people to keep up with. Why do you think people stay with certain games for so long because of the time investments.

@Northern_munkey And it's all free updates with no nonsense like seasonpass or whatever no idea how they do it.

@PloverNutter The fault of management if I have seen the articles and video's about it. And guess who gets to stay if everything goes terribly wrong.