The year 2023 has taught us one thing: a studio known for single-player games can’t just develop a service game like Destiny. Some of the most successful developers in the world had to learn this the hard way in 2023.
That’s the problem: Service games that work for over 10 years are the “holy grail” for many publishers: they guarantee bubbling, secure income for many years through microtransactions or DLCs.
That’s why studios that have so far only created single-player games should be forced to switch to “multiplayer service games”: Sony alone planned 12 new service games for their PlayStation 5.
A prime example of a studio that has made this change is Bungie, which managed to transform its “Halo” franchise into a service game with Destiny in 2014 that has been running for years.
But it is now clear that this very pattern is a recipe for disaster. With Anthem, Bioware had already failed catastrophically to convert patterns that had worked as a single player for years into a service game. Square Enix also got a bloody nose with Marvel’s Avengers.
We’ll show you 3 more games from 2023 that fared even worse than Anthem and Marvel’s Avengers.
Do it like Fortnite, but with vampires
This is the studio: “Arkane Studios” is a French development team that was able to impress with games like Dishonored and Prey for Bethesda.
This was her flop: In 2023 they were supposed to develop a service game with “Redfall”, but the vampire game with a comic look failed mercilessly and is considered by many to be one of the biggest flops of 2023.
A report from Bloomberg revealed that the development of Redfall was ill-fated from the start and resulted in people leaving the team during development. The pressure from parent company Zenimax to incorporate microtransactions didn’t exactly help either.
Note: Officially, Redfall is still “alive,” but with an average of 57 active players on Steam, that’s “barely alive” – Redfall certainly fell far short of Bethesda and the studio’s expectations.
Redfall – Official Launch Trailer
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Do what you always do, but as an online game
This is the studio: The studio “Naughty Dog” is known for the series “The Last of Us” and Uncharted. They are considered one of the best studios that always deliver quality – especially in the areas of story and presentation, they are considered to be in the top league.
This was her flop: For many years, Naughty Dog was supposed to develop “The Last of Us Online” as a multiplayer service game.
But even that just didn’t come together despite 4 years of development.
The project probably came to an end after Sony let Destiny studio Bungie look at the game and they saw numerous questions.
Ultimately, “The Last of Us Online” was canceled before even more money and time went down the drain.
The Last of Us Part 1 Launch Trailer PS5
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Make one of these cool extraction shooters, everyone likes them
This is the studio: The “Creative Assembly” studio has been around since 1987. They are best known for the strategy game series Total War, which is considered a milestone in the genre.
This was her flop: With Hyenas, the studio wanted to develop a long-running SF shooter like Destiny, but this game was also ill-fated from the start.
Even during development, it became apparent that the team had difficulty finding the right approach to Hyenas – and the problem quickly ran out here too. Shortly after the beta, development of Hyenas was stopped.
The talk is that “the most expensive game that Sega has ever had developed” was thrown into the bin here. The game is said to have cost between $40 and $70 million (via escappistmagazine)
Ultimately, publisher Sega came to the conclusion that Creative Assembly should concentrate on real-time strategy games again.
In a new shooter on Steam you steal from billionaires on Mars
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And the formula of the never-ending money cheat service game beckons forever
This is what lies behind it: This is a pattern we see again and again: These “service” titles, whether you call them MMOs or not, are titles that promise high returns but also come with high risk.
Every publisher dreams of a successful games service that brings a hefty profit into the coffers every quarter and thus offers a stable factor in the hit-driven gaming business.
In the past, such titles from inexperienced studios often started well, but then quickly collapsed because the developers ran out of content supplies: This is what happened with WildStar or Anthem, for example.
The new generation of these titles barely makes it to the start, but rather burns out in development. But even a lot of experience with service titles is no guarantee. Even experienced MMO studios like Blizzard or Daybreak had to stop their upcoming MMOs like Titan or Everquest Next early:
3 MMORPGs could have revolutionized the genre, but unfortunately they never appeared