5 games that tried to be live-service but failed

Live-service games are the promise that the experience of playing a game will live far beyond the general 60-70 hour limit imposed by a single-player campaign. The allure here is a constant influx of content over the course of years, which will keep the game alive and profitable for the publisher, while ensuring that the game continues to be an exciting experience for the player for a much longer period.

Some games do live up to this promise of being a live-service title, albeit the trend seemingly works mostly for PvP games and MMORPGs. Games such as World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls Online, Destiny, and PUBG, which were purely multiplayer focused, saw much love among players.

However, the same cannot be said for games that try to satisfy both a well-written single-player story campaign as well as a co-op/multiplayer element of the same caliber.

More often than not, such live-service games have a track record of being unable to withstand the test of time. With the best having to deal with a fluctuating player base and the worst dying out mere months after launch.

Why do live-service games struggle to find a foothold in the community and why do they often go under? Hopefully, these questions will be answered in the list that follows up ahead.

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5 games that tried to be live-service but failed include Anthem, Fallout 76, and more

1) Anthem

Following up on the success of looter-shooters like Destiny, and Overwatch, EA’s Anthem had a similar live-service gameplay model but was bolstered by the intricate world-building fame of BioWare (Dragon Age, Mass Effect). It looked sleek and for many, it was probably the iron-man flight simulator they all secretly desired.

But Anthem stumbled once on launch, and never quite managed to pick itself back up. Complaints raged, from long loading times to clunky menus to a broken loot system.

Players were disappointed that BioWare’s world-building was all but absent when it was so widely marketed prior to launch. Unlike Destiny, which had its gimmick based around its guns and the actual gun-play itself, Anthem had no such thing going for it. True, the Javelins (mech suits) of the game were supposed to be the highlight, and they were, to an extent, but that was the best thing the game had to offer.

Javelin customization was fun and further unlocks gave each player’s armor a unique look. But that didn’t help with the lackluster gameplay that players were required to sink most of their time in.

The broken loot system meant that players didn’t feel sufficiently rewarded after a mission. The missions themselves didn’t provide enough other than shooting a bunch of enemies, exploring an area, or defending a mark. The live-service tag also meant little at the time of launch, as other than the single-player campaign, there were no proper endgame missions or activities to keep players invested.

The hub world of Fort Tarsis felt like an implementation of BioWare’s design but compressed into just one area. There, NPCs were available to talk, but gone was the intuitive dialog wheel, replaced instead by simple binary options. Not to mention the lack of interesting and rich characters that the plot sorely needed.

All of this simply made Anthem a mundane experience overall and it soon lost most of its player base. In fact, after about two years, EA itself pulled the plug on this poorly made attempt at a live-service game.

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2) Fallout 76

At the time, Bethesda hadn’t suffered as big a blow to its reputation as it did when Fallout 76 rolled out. Set in an already beloved franchise, Fallout 76 was much anticipated by fans. The news that it would be a live-service game had many hoping for a unique experience in their favorite nuclear-irrradiated, post-apocalyptic world.

The idea of a multiplayer Fallout game, maybe something similar to Elder Scrolls Online, was enough of a hook that players were intrigued. ESO had been a successful live-service outing for Bethesda, which meant that fans had anticipated Fallout 76 to be in a similar vein. However, upon launch, all hopes were gone.

Once players were out of vault 76 and thrust into the open world of post-apocalyptic West Virginia, one thing became strikingly apparent: there were no NPCs. This meant that the world felt significantly less populated and lived in.

Meeting other players online was the only way to interact with any sentient creature. That in itself was a rare occurrence since each server could hold only so many players at a time. The lack of a hub world meant that there was no designated location assigned for player interaction either.

Finally, the sheer amount of bugs meant that tackling them took priority and any new content got pushed back, meaning that players had to wait even longer for new content in this live-service title. Existing content, on the other hand, had its own issues. Most quests were boring and did little to enrich the world.

Holotapes made it feel like everyone had already had their fun and left, leaving behind ghosts of memories. Combat was clumsy, non-responsive, and had lost the one thing that made it stand out in previous games: VATS.

Precision targeting and slow-motion shooting was about the coolest thing in the original Fallout games. But in a multiplayer setting that was not possible, so it was replaced with an auto-targeting system which did more harm than good.

Despite some later expansions being added two years down the line, the game failed to resurface, as by that time it had already been deemed a failed project. There simply wasn’t enough exciting stuff to do in Fallout 76.

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3) Battlefield 2042

Unlike most games on this list, Battlefield 2042 had a less than successful pre-launch period. While initially lauded by EA as the best battlefield game to be in development, it faced some criticism even before it hit shelves due to developer DICE and EA’s failure with the previous entry, Battlefield V.

After the failure of Battlefield V, EA were quick to abandon it after just a few months, choosing to move onto 2042, their new live-service venture.

Around the time the reveal trailer dropped, the news that the game would have no traditional single-player campaign sent fans reeling. EA had to address this backlash by promising that there would be a story unfolding in the multiplayer version that players could tackle solo if they wanted to. They also spoke about additional content that would follow suit in their live-service model.

The news that it was evolving from the planned Battle Royale mode into a more structured 64v64 PvP mode had many players questioning the quality of the game that would be released. Upon launch, BF 2042 got one of the most divisive critics vs player ratings on review sites, with critics claiming it was a decent enough game, but players insisting that it was nothing but unplayable.

The reason was that the game was chock full of glitches, bugs and performance issues, most of which were present during the beta testing and had seemingly not been addressed. Matchmaking was a hellscape with connection errors plaguing ever so often that players were getting booted out before they could even connect to a game.

Additionally, BF 2042 lacked many features that had been there in previous entries and were being considered industry standards for live-service shooters. One of the most important of these was an in-game team communication mode, which, in a competitive first-person shooter in 2021, was a rather basic necessity.

Even after three updates, bugs persisted, and without any new content updates, the game saw nearly a 97% drop in players, a considerable reduction for a live-service game.

So poor is the current condition of BF 2042 that fans of the series are lamenting this as the death of the franchise. Rumors have arisen that EA is moving forward with the development of a new Battlefield game, something reminiscent of what happened during the failure of Battlefield V.

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4) Marvel’s Avengers

Crystal Dynamics’ first live-service venture, Marvel’s Avengers, had a lot going for it during the marketing phase. After the success of Insomniac’s Spider-Man, the gaming community, in general, was eager to see what Marvel was doing next.

The announcement of an Avengers game, especially after the success of the MCU, had stirred a lot of anticipation. What rang a special bell with fans was the live-service nature, the promise of adding new campaigns, and more importantly characters, down the line.

The first hurdle of this live-service superhero title came during the reveal trailer when the heroes in the game looked eerily familiar to their MCU counterparts, but not quite the same. This pseudo-familiarity raised more than a couple of eyebrows but was soon waved aside as a cosmetic issue, which could either be fixed or simply gotten used to.

The gameplay reveal worked mostly in the favor of the developers as it showed a very cinematic set-piece, with characters seemingly working as they should and combat, at least, looking spectacular. One issue brought up was the inclusion of QTEs (quick time events) which were featured several times during the nearly 19-minute E3 showcase.

Developers assured these questions by promising that QTEs wouldn’t end up taking precedence over actual combat in most missions. From there, the game had a mostly smooth run till launch. This included a very expansive marketing campaign and drip-feeding of content to fans, which somehow never revealed too much.

Post-launch, however, was a different story. The single-player campaign was too short and didn’t even let players play as the core Avengers half the time. The combat was unintuitive, with most characters feeling like they moved and fought basically the same way. It looked flashy but eventually felt monotonous and was filled to the brim with QTEs.

The loot system was too complicated and didn’t feel rewarding enough. The in-game cosmetics were mostly cheap recolors of the same outfits for all the characters and the cool movie suits were locked behind a paywall.

While the live-service campaigns and heroes were free to access at no additional cost, the content was simply not diverse enough as all levels were essentially structured the same and felt no different than doing some training in the HARM room.

As for the free expansions that were promised, only three have been released so far. Each one of them was shorter by either half or even less than that from the full runtime of the main campaign.

For a game based on such a marketable IP, Marvel’s Avengers has a drastic difference in the number of copies sold vs the number of players who regularly play the game, even to this day. The bet on a live-service Avengers game being profitable cost Square Enix a pretty penny.

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5) Star Wars: Battlefront 2

After the success of the rebooted Star Wars: Battlefront by EA and DICE in 2015, the announcement of Battlefront 2 was met with cheers and adoration. The promise was of including space battles and incorporating events as well as heroes and villains from both the prequel and sequel eras, in addition to the original trilogy.

Upon launch, these promises were met, albeit with a catch. The catch itself was quite simple: EA just wanted more money from players. This live-service game had the simplest mechanic to get players to cough up more cash: microtransactions.

Gone were the days when one could play a Battlefront game and choose a hero or villain depending on their expertise (or luck) on the battlefield. With this iteration, they had to unlock a Hero first by paying either in-game credits or a hefty sum from their wallet, for a game they’d already paid for.

Battlefront 2 offered a solemn look back at the time when one could jump into an X-wing as per their whims during a galactic skirmish. With this game, they had to pre-load a fighter with star cards to get the best optimum defense and offense before a game to have any hope of winning.

How would one acquire said cards in a live-service model? Through RNG loot boxes and hoping for the best or paying real money and hoping for the best.

Microtransactions became such a core part of Battlefront 2 that many were concerned that it was essentially equivalent to gambling. This was because even after paying for a loot box, there was no actual guarantee players would get any good drops. It felt less like a live-service game and more like a live round of slot machines.

The pay-to-win strategy also meant that players who didn’t want to spend money on virtual goodies were continuously outclassed by ones who had kitted out their characters with a few bonus Star Cards.

The backlash against Battlefront 2 is now infamous. At the time, the game was deemed a disgrace, with people condemning EA for greedily including substantial game-changing microtransactions in an already full-priced offering.

However, developer DICE should be commended. Despite such outrage and complaints, they took their time and listened to honest feedback, adding necessary balancing elements, and in time, making loot boxes nearly non-existent through future updates. In a rare occurrence, a live-service game gained more credibility after all of its content had already been released.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 stumbled hard on launch and had a rough couple of years since 2017. And yet, it has become a fairly accessible and fun game to play as of last year, requiring no in-game payments to celebrate its full potential.

So, Battlefront 2 is included in this list as an example of a game that did fail, especially during launch, but managed to find its way back to the players and fans by listening to honest feedback and working to correct its flaws.