Live service games were never my cup of tea. It seems sweet at first, with its constant updates and (usually) a free-to-play model, but I’m painfully aware that games as a service (GaaS) count my time in cents rather than the fun I had.
Here’s why I dislike live service games in general.
1 Monetization Is Out of Control
Predatory and egregious microtransactions in live service games, and the industry as a whole, is a driving force in how I choose games. It’s one of my Great Filters. Though I adore Helldivers 2 and have kept up with Diablo 4’s seasons, monetization really wears down my desire to play for too long. I can’t help but feel I’m being given a lesser experience.
You’ve got battle passes, season passes, and pay-to-win garbage. Cosmetic microtransactions don’t get a pass anymore and I was already tepid with them, at best. This pursuit for all the money has led to so many games being released undercooked. Fallout 76 was wild on release, Babylon’s Fall was shut down, and Concord was refunded (the jury is still out on if it’ll return free-to-play), and that’s just a handful of examples.
And to make matters worse, monetization is deeply ingrained in games that children flock to, like Fortnite and Roblox. I play Roblox with my kids and I’m always flabbergasted at the manipulative nature of the platform. You can hardly play without being harassed by pop-ups for microtransactions or—and this one’s my favorite—buying a game pass that disables pop-ups.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to support a game you love, but monetization crossed the line a long time ago.
2 The Lack of Respect For My Time
I was never really a fan of an ever-evolving system. I do have a soft spot for MMOs; I’d gladly play feral druid again in World of Warcraft Classic or finish my journey on FFXIV. However, FOMO is constantly weaponized, and to me, that’s a game that overstays its welcome really fast.
It feels like someone else trying to schedule my play time. Why should new content only be accessible to the most dedicated? I’d rather approach a game in my own time, at my own pace, from start to finish. A complete experience is much more valuable to me rather than this piecemeal cycle that was never satisfying to begin with.
Some live service games get around this other Great Filter of mine by having interesting gameplay. Black Ops 6’s movement mechanics were enough for me to, at the very least, subscribe for Game Pass again, and I had a blast. It’ll keep me around for a month or two, but then its live service disease will wear me down and I’ll stop playing altogether.
There’s one aspect of a changing game that I do appreciate: it’s the stories. I love the highlight reels and the big moments and the close calls. I’ve had a few myself, as I’m sure you have too. I think it’s a unique, shared experience live multiplayer games offer more often than single-player.
3 Live Service Games Are Anti-Preservation
When servers go down—after all, you can’t run them forever—there’s no guarantee a patch is released to continue playing long after the studio closes its doors. I can’t return to a time in League of Legends’s history when seasons weren’t a thing, the time I started playing.
It goes the other way, too. How a live service game looks at the start and at the end could be wildly different things, like Destiny 2. The discs don’t have those files, so you’re left with an inferior copy.
All of it should be preserved. We should be like the Brotherhood of Steel, minus the jingoism, and preserve media as much as possible.
Peer-to-peer connection is a start but having the tools to run my own server, after the game is dead, should be a given. Otherwise, fans of a dead game are left using sketchy means, which only leads to trojans kicking back in the corners of your computer.
I really tried to give live service games a chance, but I’m glad it never caught on with me. I’m content picking away at my backlog, preserving what I have now, and watching the deluge of games-as-a-service gunk pass me by. You won’t catch me mourning its death as a genre, either.
