Live service games: Lucrative model, bad for the industry or both?

Gaming, like any popular industry, regularly goes through trends and can lean towards certain models over others. Recently, the industry has been moving towards more digital formats and subscription models, from live service games to free games that offer microtransactions for characters, skins and in-game items.

Big studios in the industry seem to be all in for games-as-a-service but not everyone is onboard, with gamers, game journalists and even other studios providing some pushback.

If you’re a gamer, then you most likely already know what a live service game is. If you’re more unfamiliar with the term, it’s a type of game model that works on the basis of the game being a continuous online experience as opposed to closed single-player story.

Live games or ‘”games-as-a-service” need to always be online to be played and throw you into servers with dozens or hundreds of people. Popular games in this genre include Fortnite, Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone and more recently Helldivers 2. The nature of said games can vary, for example adding you into game arenas, fighting other players in hopes of coming out on top individually or in a team, in games known as known as “battle royales”. Or having players play in online open-world environments, where they have a choice of fighting each other or working together on missions.

Either way, this game model lends itself to long playing time and is also ever evolving, with the potential for a developer to keep releasing content updates. These come in the form of new character skins, weapons and maps and are an alternative to developers releasing an entirely new game every few years.

The big question that video games are facing currently is one of sustainability and the face of the industry going into the future. The live service model is lucrative and can be incredibly successful, but that’s only when it works. This game model has become controversial in recent years for being supposedly anti-consumer, locking characters or items behind paywalls, which gamers have sometimes labelled as “pay-to-win” systems. The idea being that gamers can essentially pay for better gear and items for an advantage in combat, rather than progress naturally as they play. Meanwhile other people think live services allow developers to be lazy and not push themselves to innovate in game making.

The irony of the live-service model is that it’s the ultimate way to keep gamers engaged in a game in theory, but a few games in the genre in recent years have quickly come and gone, falling to the wayside. Notable examples include Japanese developer Square Enix's Avengers, and the now embattled Skull and Bones from Ubisoft.

When a live-service game works, it can be a game changer for a studio with potentially massive revenue, but this is far from a guarantee and a recent trend in the industry has seen more studios pitching big ideas to continue to make games in this model. But every company doing this will have to face the risk of potential big budget failures and somehow recouping their losses if they can.

Another main criticism for this game model is that the consumer ultimately suffers, with more live-service games that offer repetitive gameplay, potentially addictive micro-transactions and less unique and fun experiences like you can find in single player games, so the argumenU

The world of gaming is no stranger to change and is one of the fastest moving entertainment industries in the world. Some current changes include the increasing move to digital formats for games themselves and the rise of the subscription model, with services like Xbox Game Pass. These services offer access to thousands of games for a monthly fee. In turn the live-service model has been seeing increasing popularity in recent years, with the most played games on average in a year staying unchanged—usually being Fortnite, Apex Legends and League of Legends.

Overall, gaming seems to be trending towards digital platforms, subscription models and live service games that entice gamers in by being free, though people know they may eventually have to pay for cosmetic items, character skins and so on.

Gaming may be set for a possible tumultuous future with ever-growing production costs for high-budget games that in turn need to make a lot of profit to make a return on their production. In the digital age making a game is easier than ever, but making money from a game isn’t quite on the same level. This disparity may see more companies onboard the live-service model, which may not always be the best route for their own brand or for gamers.