Seriously. There isn’t a single live service thing I enjoy. Windows 11 has a bunch of live service integrations, one of which effectively bricked my gaming laptop because Microsoft can’t be assed to git revert a change to their website. I’m rocking Linux now and not looking back.
Live service if done right can work. Problem is these companies do the absolute minimum and that just doesnt work. Like most thing they have to put some effort in it, but hey that costs money and thats a no no So im not necessary against live service but knowing these companies just do fuck all, then well just No
Let’s call Live Service what it really is, company hosted anti-piracy because they don’t want to pay/implement Denuvo
That’s just always online. Live Service is milking customers for more money on top of the already full priced game, because just releasing a product that’s good and is the best selling game of that year wasn’t profitable enough for the vampires at the top of the company.
Right. Wasn’t Overwatch considered live service? I put tons of hours into it before they shut it down permanently.
I put tons of hours into it before they shut it down permanently.
Which is one of the major problems with Live Service. Sure, not everyone plays older games, but I know I have a number of titles I return to regularly. Hell, one of my favorite games of all times was released in 1989 and I still go back an re-play it from time to time. Any game which releases as “Live Service” and requires an always on-line connection to some server which I don’t host can go eat a bag of dicks.
Hell, if they can at least be decent enough to ALLOW self-hosting servers, that’d be great
It bothers me a lot that WB had Hogwarts Legacy (which sold great, out sold Call of Duty, and generally did fantastic) and Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League (which unsold, got bad reviews, and has probably killed it’s development studio) and came to the conclusion that they need to go all in on more games like Suicide Squad.
Live services have proven revenue though. Look at how they all 100% succeed in being 100% profitable!
Look at anthem!
In other words, Warner Bros has learned absolutely nothing from their recent Suicide Squad failure. One would think that after the first time they forced a single-player focused dev team that regularly produced hits to make live-service garbage, they’d have learned something. Hogwarts Legacy wasn’t even that good of a game, largely due to the live-service elements it already had, but it sold way, way more than Suicide Squad.
Honest question: what live-service content does it have? Because I played through the game one and a half times and found no live-service crap. Sure there’s the “DLC” for the dark wizard crap, but that doesn’t really count imo since you can get that whenever
Unless there was something at launch that’s gone now, I can’t think of any. One totally optional cosmetic DLC and a couple of pre-order bonuses that don’t affect the story at all, but when I played it last month, I didn’t feel there was anything missing.
You heard it here first folks, the guys with the most money have declared taking risks is officially dead. They will only pursue guaranteed profits. They’re so completely addicted to the stuff that they cannot take a paycut or have a bad quarter, even though they will be given Golden Parachutes if the company folds.
Capitalism has turned into a complete joke with people who literally think they are owed profits by simply existing. It’s similar to the ad industry where they think we owe them viewing their ads because they paid for the ads, and by not viewing them we’re breaking some kind of social contract. Bullshit.
This is what happens when laborers are alienated from what they produce.
The thing is that they go for this because it does make money. For all the talk about lack of original properties, when original properties are released they don’t do so well. Reminds me of how people bitched at Disney for not releasing original films that aren’t sequels, so they did, and they bombed and nobody paid for them.
It’s hard for me to think of a company that is public and that I actually care about other than a few indie devs. But once it grows and becomes public it’s all downhill.
Sometimes, it doesn’t even take that, as evidenced by what happened to the developers for Disco Elysium.
“Live Service? Oh it never works. I mean, these people delude themselves into thinking it might but…
it might work for us…” -WB, after watching WB’s Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League tank
Enough people are naive enough to buy into a live service game with a Harry Potter coat of paint. Just look at the first game, a paint by numbers “baby’s first RPG” that made serious bank off of millions of oblivious gamers and transphobes.
yawn
Or, and hear me out, not fucking that. Just give me the next year and let me import the character.
Or a brand new story in a different time period with a brand new character.
Want a different coloured hat, or a new type of mount? By all means, have cosmetic paid DLC.
But the all-in-one single player story was the good bit. Don’t fuck that up for the sequel.
Warner Brothers can’t even run a good business when it comes to movies in the DC universe, so I’m not surprised that can’t run a gaming business either.
WB is incompetent. Look no further than Arkham Knight which had horrible publishing and whose PC port was farmed out to the lowest bidder. Arkham Knight succeeded despite its publisher and not because of it. Same thing with Hogwarts.
So yeah if they’ve even forced a studio to make a sequel, buckle up. They’re going full EA at this point and they don’t care if they run it into the ground. Just need a bigger graveyard to put this game next to Henry Cavils Superman.
Why not make it a full MMO, while you’re at it? Hogwarts Legacy 2 could be the WoW-killer we’ve been waiting 20 years for!
Probably because MMO is not the trending buzz word for execs and shareholders. Plus you got an example of a successful live service game (Helldivers 2). Doubtful that these are the type of people to be in touch with what people actually wants
Honestly that would be kinda cool, and I’m surprised no one’s made a Harry Potter MMO/small-scale multiplayer co-op. It’s a pretty good starting point to have each of the players be students at Hogwarts, attending classes and such together.
Well that makes it easy for me, I just won’t buy the game.
Yup, that tracks with WB’s executive level thinking after suicide squad fucked up bigly.
Man, Warner Bros hates making money do they.
Today in “executives are the worst people on the planet”…
I think games corps should die in a fire
They won’t be thinking it should be a live service when people play the game for maybe 30 minutes then ask for a refund because of low quality.
And I think every live service is a “no buy”.
If they don’t want to make money, they should do it and make whatever business goon suggesting it very happy (until that person looks at the balance sheet).
