1y ago

Do you find the description Live Service Game off-putting?

Over the years, there've been various red flags in gaming, for me at least. Multi-media. Full-Motion Video. Day-One DLC. Microtransactions. The latest one is Live Service Game. I find the idea repulsive because it immediately tells me this is an online-required affair, even if it doesn't warrant it. There's no reason for some games to require an internet connection when the vast majority of activities they provide can be done in a single-player fashion. So I suspect Live Service Game to be less of a commitment to truly providing updated worthwhile content and more about DRM. Instead of imposing Denuvo or some other loathed 3rd party layer on your software, why not just require internet regardless of whether it brings value to customer?

What do you think about Live Service Games? Do you prefer them to traditional games that ship finished, with potential expansions and DLC to follow later?

52 comments

Unless it's an MMO, or something like an online aRPG, the tag "live-service" immediately means that you're fully expecting to release an unfinished game, collect your preorder money, get backlash for the game being unfinished garbage, and then release a few patches as a "Sorry we got caught" excuse.
The days when you'd buy something, and you would know that is the final version of your software, have been over for a long time
- Even MMOs tend to be terrible live service games. This mode necessitates a good cadence of content (actual content, not stuff to buy) that most studios seem incapable of doing.
  
  In that scope, cromulent Early Access game seem like the poster child for live service games.
- The days when you'd buy something, and you would know that is the final version of your software, have been over for a long time
  That sounds like a good thing to me. The real problem is that when buying a game, there are no guarantees about how finished it is.
  
  The point is that when you printed something on a disk, and had 0 capability of pushing patches down the road, you were forced to finish your product. Now it's not the case, evidently

I simply don't buy live service games. I hate them

I don’t have a problem with the core concept since it can technically be done well (Fortnite, despite it not appealing to me personally) but since everyone wants the “live service” staying power and money without putting in the “live service” effort it’s become a red flag to me to prepare for an unfinished, buggy, likely money-grubbing “game” with a shaky future - case in point, Halo Infinite’s campaign pretty much going nowhere and being Act 1 of what will be pretty much nothing now since all the campaign staff went bye-bye.
- Honestly 99% of the time "early access" is just a red flag now
- Man, Infinite's campaign was such a disappointment. Halo to me was always about the big set pieces and new locations. Infinite had 2 locations essentially the whole game, not to mention the non story that happens mostly off screen. It's too bad because the grapple hook was one of the best additions to Halo since Bungie but you don't have anything fun to actually play with it.

Very much so, because to me it openly announces that the game is centered in its design about something between:
Microtransactions
Extrinsic motivation
FOMO
None of those are a good story, great characters, good world building or good intrinsic gameplay design. And they don't need to be for a live service game, but it also means it's inherently worse as a game than the same underlying idea not developed as a money squeeze service.

I find the word "service" off-putting. I want to buy things outright and own them. I do not want recurring fees.

"Service Games", gotcha games, games with excessive DLC (looking at you sim games), internet required and Denuvo games are all hard passes.
- It's actually gacha games
  
  feels the compulsion to make that correction
  Sounds like they got chya, hon.
  
  [snort] well ACKSHUALLY--
  man don't no one give a fuck unless they're already in sunk cost fallacy with that 'genre' and its predators

Theoretically it’s not a turnoff: for example, I was fine with paying the subscription for World of Warcraft back in 2007. But in practice I know what it means today, and that means being psychologically manipulated and crit in the wallet, so hell freakin no.
I actually am in favour of government legislation against them since they generally appeal to the young, who are essentially psychologically defenceless against most of the trickery. I don’t quite think they’re “spiritual opium” as the PRC would say, but the line was crossed long ago

Live Service Game, the idea...I find unappealing and just plain skippable. Live Service Game, the phrase...is so much better than "Game as a Service."
But hey, not every game/genre/delivery method is going to appeal to everybody. The industry is big enough to cater to multiple niches, even if some are much (much, much) bigger than others. I'm happy that people can find whatever game they like, and I can find my favorites as well. That doesn't make anybody more correct than the other.

Live service comes across as life service. A game made to monopolize my time and become a significant part of my life by using addictive systems. By the very nature of enjoying the variety of games, it will immediately turn me off a game.

Live service games/ games a service are an automatic no from me. Too many have little to no content, constant delays on content, a dying community, or ridden with predatory monetization. Not to mention I dont like to pay for games that i cant play when the servers go down.

After Destiny, yup. The term's become synonymous with "increasingly-higher wallet drain with increasingly diminished returns over time, and we're still gonna need a fully-staffed cosmetic shop and battle pass to get the last couple dollars we didn't hoover out of you with the season pass's cost".

I don’t have the time to play live service games. The next time I play a game it might be completely different? No appeal to me at all

I'm not a fan of it. I think live service games generally comes with battle passes, which are essentially preordering DLCs. DLCs that have not been announced, with no details and nothing else. They also often offer some exp bonus or in game items. I think this has an impact on how the game is balanced. The bonuses can't be game breaking so they have to nerf the base game experience to make it "valuable".
I think it can be done well if the base game is free. Dota 2 and csgo are good examples of it because the bonuses that come with battle passes are mostly cosmetic, and they help the support game development. If the base game is £60, then the company can fuck off. I prefer standalone games with expansion packs being released at a later time. Being able to play offline is also great, even though I am rarely without Internet access.

I have nothing against mmo/live/gaas games but the quality is never there to justify it. If anything gaas have less content than a singleplayer offline game. It's a total bait and switch.

I don't have the long term attention span demanded of live service games, since once I'm done with a game I move on.

On one hand constant updates and continuing a games longevity can be nice, but in reality it usually just means fomo which I despise.

In anno 1800 (which is the only game I've played with denuvo) it still needs to have a connection to the ubisoft servers to run, so live service isn't just about dodging 3rd party drm
- That's terrible. :(

its perfect really, they all should put it front and center! cause it tells me right of the bat i i never should touch said product, its a money saver really.

Eh, no big deal. The only one I don’t care for on your list is day one DLC. That always seems sketchy. plenty of game I've gotten into had day one for me DLC, but that's cause I joined late, like rimworld. That was a hard DLC package to swallow. If I lived somewhere that I didn't have good internet I could see caring more, but that's rare enough to be written off by developers.
- At least with Rimworld you can pirate the dlcs and add them to the Steam copy with no issues.
  That's what I ended up doing since I'm poor. I saw a comment from the devs on the torrent thread basically saying they're just glad you're playing it and to consider buying it if you're able to in the future. Seeing that pretty much solidified them as great devs to me, and when I actually have some disposable income I'll end up buying them just because of that.

I just stopped buying main stream games for the most part. Indie games is where it is at. Often better gameplay loop and comes at a better price and I would rather see my money going to creative people instead of some greedy CEO.
Live service is a no from me.
- Well said, I definitely lean towards indie with the occasional Fromsoft/Larian/Bethesda purchase

I'm fine with it, if it's fun enough. I'm no gaming activist/snob.
- I'm grateful for activists, particularly those with a focus on archiving gaming. That's another area where I think supporting Live Service Games might be shortsighted on the part of the consumer. By accepting it as a practice, ownership is ceded toward the publisher or creator. We're less owners and more renters when it comes to gaming property.
  I remember when I bought Street Fighter 2 for the SNES and realized, I no longer have to go to the arcade to play this game. I no longer have to submit an endless amount of quarters to play what I can play endlessly at home for a one-time fee. It was an amazing feeling. And with LSG it's like we're coming back around.

You really missed out not playing Command and Conquer
- I played C&C, Red Alert 1, 2 and 3. Tiberian Sun was bad.
  
  Just closed your eyes during the FMVs?

Not at all a problem for me. I pretty much only play competitive shooters/racing games, so live service is a pretty important part to both genres.
Much prefer it to the older DLC models where DLC content would be dead half the time because nobody would buy it.
Edit: Love that the Lemmy hivemind is as bad as Reddit. Can’t have anyone disagreeing with you
- It used to not be. FPS games were run by players, not corporations. The ability to run your own dedicated server was baked into the game. Today you can still setup a Quake 2 server without having to rely on the publisher or a 3rd party. It doesn't have to be that way today, but people accept it.
  
  I absolutely will accept it because it brings better gameplay. FPS games are more fun when there’s constant balancing changes and new content on a schedule. It’s infinitely better than older game models where if one thing is broken you’re stuck with it for the entire lifetime of the game.
  Being able to run my own dedicated server isn’t even something I’d want to do, nor would I want to play on player hosted servers.
  When games go EoL, sure, require them to open source the multiplayer engine. But really, it’s not a big deal that an individual can’t host a Battle Royale server.

~~But~~not a problem in free to play games, not in full price games

No and I think it's kind of silly that people find the mention of the term so upsetting. Content aside, I like multiplayer games. I've been playing them for years. The idea of a multiplayer game that gets content updates is nothing new. CoD (just one example) has been doing it since 2008 and I'm supposed to be upset with that now that the big chunks of content they release are free and it has a different term describing it?
Like I said, just one example, but that's generally how it goes. And you're free to buy whatever cosmetics you want. Maybe it's because I've never been one for microtransactions and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything because skins I'll probably never use are up for sale. Which is the flip side to more complete content packs being sold.
Also, the idea that games are unfinished simply because they're offering more content is weird to me.
- Multiplayer games are great. I think the upsetting part is that from the word Go, whether it warrants being a Live Service Game or not, it implies an expiration date and an online-only requirement. When I bought Overwatch, I never heard them describe it as a LSG. Maybe they did and it just didn't register. What I know though is that having bought 2 copies, one for PC and the other for PS4, I cannot play those games now and in their place is a reportedly substandard product (one I didn't pay for or ask for).
  So now I have this game which I loved and still played occasionally is gone because the publisher made a decision to expire it arbitrarily (read: to get people to pay them more money).
  Overwatch could've run on player driven servers. Much of this stuff can. That might only serve a few thousand or few hundred people 10 years after launch, but that's the right thing to do.

Op, I think you're a little confused. I can't think of a live service game that isn't a multiplayer game in some form. the required online is because that's literally what the game is.
Be mad about the scummy lootbox practices that prop it up, don't be mad that other people like online games.
- I mean, there are examples where the multiplayer should be optional and thus force the game to be live service. For instance, Diablo 4 should be perfectly playable single player, offline, yet it's live service and to my understanding requires an Internet connection
- "in some form," being the key part of that. Someone mentioned Diablo 4. It doesn't have to be always online. Gran Turismo 7 is another example. It's a trend.

Doesn't annoy me in the least bit. I think most gamers are whiny and entitled the second something isn't 100% catered to them.

52 comments