WARFRAME is one of the longest-running and most popular live-service games of all time, having endured for more than a decade.
However, when it comes to games making a splash like this, it seems to be a dying breed, as support for many live-service games drops soon after launch.
It’s an incredibly competitive market place, and if your game doesn’t speak to players straight away they’ll move onto something else.
But the situation can be turned around as No Man’s Sky, Fallout 76, and Final Fantasy 14 have proven following disastrous launches.
Despite these few late successes, many companies will cancel their games not long after launch.
In an interview with VGC, Digital Extremes CEO Steve Sinclair had some things to say about studios that give up on their live-service games.
Sinclair said: “They think the release is make or break, and it’s not.
“They have a financial way to be persistent, and they never do it.
“It comes out, doesn’t work and they throw it away.”
Exoprimal is one of the latest live-service games to end support, as Capcom has said it will recycle seasonal content just a year after release.
He added: “Isn’t that a shame when you put so many years of your life into iterating on those systems or building technology or building the start of a community, and because the operating costs are high, you get terrified when you see the numbers drop and you leave.
“We’ve seen this with amazing releases that I think have massive potential, and I think they eject too soon.”
We doubt other companies will take Sinclair’s advice to heart, but it would be nice to see live-service games have more longevity.
If you want to read more about live-service games, check out the Fortnite x Pirates of the Caribbean crossover event.
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