The open-beta for new live service game Disney Dreamlight Valley debuted recently with 4 Disney worlds and plans to keep adding more over the next year. In the modern gaming era, post-launch patches and continual content updates like this are vital to the success of any multiplayer-centric title. However, there's a major difference between keeping a player base engaging and deliberately nickel-and-diming dedicated fans.
While some outings strike a perfect balance between worthwhile updates and monetization, others seemingly make no bones about the fact that microtransactions and subscriptions are a top priority. Game development and publication can be a pretty cut-throat business, and studios can't run purely on artistic merit, but, if unchecked, the model can utterly ruin a project.
Halo Infinite
Launched in late 2021, Halo Infinite was a fundamentally sound title that wowed fans at first but faded from the limelight after promises couldn't be met and certain features were scrapped. Currently, the Halo community is in turmoil after the long-anticipated split-screen co-op update was confirmed to have been canceled, and many are still frustrated over the inordinate grind in its marquee multiplayer component.
Initially billed as a game meant to stand the test of time, much of Halo Infinite's fanbase is already calling for significant changes less than a year after release. While not a bad game, Halo Infinite definitely disappointed a substantial subset of series veterans.
Call of Duty: Vanguard
Released in 2019, Infinity Ward's soft reboot of the Modern Warfare franchise revitalized a series that many felt had long since lost its luster. Foregoing the hero shooter elements of the previous Call of Duty: Black Ops installments and ditching the advanced movement mechanics that became a hallmark of the franchise in the 2010s, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 felt like a return to form.
Unfortunately, much of that goodwill evaporated by the time of Call of Duty: Vanguard's release in late 2021. An anemic stop-gap installment, the campaign and zombies offerings were utterly bare bones, and the multiplayer more or less played second fiddle to the battle royal spin-off Call of Duty: Warzone.
Tom Clancy's The Division
Set in a devastated downtown Manhattan, Tom Clancy's The Division was a third-person shooter that promised to be a unique blend of co-op and PvP, but it was ultimately an overwhelmingly bland looter shooter that struggled to introduce any kind of meaningful content, particularly in its endgame segments.
In the lead-up to the game's early 2016 launch, publisher Ubisoft declared that the game wouldn't be live service, pay-to-win, or microtransaction heavy—but these promises weren't exactly kept. While Tom Clancy's The Division wasn't quite the battle pass-centric, microtransaction heavy looter shooter fans know today, it certainly proved to be an early blueprint from which later live service games would build.
Marvel's Avengers
The Marvel Cinematic Universe dominated the box office for most of the 2010s, but Disney was surprisingly slow to adapt any of the films into large-scale video games. That said, the comic book property would finally receive a big-budget outing in 2020, but audience reception would be fairly lukewarm.
Uninspired, bug-riddled, and boring, players were pretty quick to abandon Marvel's Avengers. Part of the title's negative reception came from its extreme emphasis on microtransactions which lead to an inordinate grind for those unwilling to pay. Additionally, supplementary content came too late to rescue a title that could have been a slam-dunk had it been handled with a bit more care.
Evolve
While the torch is now being carried by titles like Dead by Daylight and its evolving roster of killers, the hype surrounding asymmetrical multiplayer games arguably began in the lead-up to the launch of 2K and Turtle Rock Studio's Evolve. A sci-fi-inspired title that saw a band of four kitted-out hunters pursuing a player-controlled monster, the game turned heads when it debuted in 2015.
Unfortunately, the game seemed to be fated for termination from the get-go; the online storefront demanded exorbitant fees for simple skins, and the whole endeavor felt more like an excuse to sell cosmetics than anything else. Evolve may have been saved by something resembling a battle pass system, but, by the time that concept was popularized, the game was long dead.
Fallout 76
Before the release of Fallout 76, the franchise had been celebrated as an exemplary collection of single-player first-person RPGs. However, the 2018 title abandoned that paradigm, instead shoehorning in multiplayer mechanics that many fans believed to be unnecessary.
To make matters worse, Fallout 76 was so hobbled by bugs and glitches when it was released that it was essentially all but unplayable. While Bethesda has since transformed the title into an experience the community has been willing to embrace, it still serves as a warning to developers choosing to adopt the release-now-patch-later principle.
Anthem
One of the most notorious live service disasters of all time, Electronic Arts' Anthem was billed as a monumental triumph for developer BioWare capable of contesting the ultra-popular Destiny series. However, Anthem launched with a resounding thud and was abandoned with nary a whimper as the game totally failed to live up to the hype.
Concerns about developer crunch and unrealistic expectations from the publisher were abundant, and the game was turned into a total slog thanks to extreme grind and mountains of worthless loot. Rumors about a rework had circulated for a while, but the plug was ultimately pulled in early 2021.
Battlefield 2042
While Battlefield V was perceived as a relatively ho-hum entry in the longstanding Battlefield franchise, impressive pre-release trailers helped to generate quite a bit of hype for the game's direct follow-up, Battlefield 2042. A return to the near-future setting that had last been seen in Battlefield 4, Battlefield 2042 looked to be a next-gen ready return-to-form for the notorious FPS franchise.
Unfortunately, the final product hardly resembled a Battlefield title; unbelievably buggy, laden with live service elements, and making use of an unwelcome specialists system, the title was essentially DOA. Subsequent patches and updates have mitigated some of these issues, but there's no denying the fact that the game was perceived by most as a massive disappointment.
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
Ubisoft's worn-out open-world sandbox formula has been derided time and time again by fans, and things came to an ironic breaking point in 2019's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. A live service desperate to keep players searching for the next outpost to conquer, upgrade to pursue, and cosmetics to equip, the title felt as if the developers had purposefully laid the live service model bare for all to see.
To make matters infinitely worse, Breakpoint was the primary victim of Ubisoft Quartz, an ill-fated venture that added NFTs to games. This move—as well as Breakpoint as a whole—was thoroughly rejected by gamers.
Babylon's Fall
Developers of the near-legendary Bayonetta and Nier franchises, Platinum Games had established itself as a premiere purveyor of quality JRPG experiences. However, with muddy visuals, banal gameplay, and a general lack of worthwhile content, 2022's Babylon's Fall turned out to be a variable clinic in how to not make a live service game.
Scoring fours and fives across the board from reviewers and earning a lackluster mixed review score on Steam, many agreed that Babylon's Fall simply didn't have anything worthwhile to offer. According to PCGamesN, publisher Square Enix plans to pull the plug on the game ahead of its one-year anniversary, meaning that it will have been one of the shortest-lived live-service games of all time.