Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has launched Episode 2 of its first season which, as you might expect, has not exactly burned the barn down in terms of playercount
    • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2322·
      6 months ago

      Not until Helldivers 2 dies too. I was tricked into thinking it was healing, and then that game exploded.

      EDIT: The truth hurts, but that’s still a live service game that’s actively working against the interests of consumers and preservationists. The more money and playtime people give it, the worse this situation gets.

      • Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
        204·
        6 months ago

        I still don’t think the enemy is “all live service games” exactly. A lot of us have a style of gameplay we enjoy that makes us go “That was fun! I want some more of it.”

        Just that Rocksteady made singleplayer games well, and their poor shift just informs us that not all games need to be live service, especially when the gameplay shifts to something no one likes in order to achieve Number Go Up (similar situation with Gotham Knights)

        • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldEnglish
          112·
          6 months ago

          Number can go up without being tied to a server you don’t and can’t control. Those games still get made, from Titan Quest to Borderlands. Nothing about the gameplay loop of Helldivers offends me; the totally unnecessary forced obsolescence does. The thing that makes it a live service game is the thing that makes it incompatible with surviving for more than a few years without an Act of God, like Knockout City. I also hate that people have been trained into differentiating “single player” and “live service”, as though multiplayer must inherently be this way when it doesn’t have to be. A live service game is just an inferior version of a game they could have made that would survive offline, because it’s tied to their servers. Do you think Sony could have mandated a PSN account after the point of sale if it was available DRM-free and allowed you to run your own servers?

    • FinishingDutch@lemmy.worldEnglish
      171·
      6 months ago

      When you can pack the peak amount of players into a decent sized ballroom, that’s never a good sign for your game’s future.

      At this point they’re probably better off just refunding buyers and shuttering the game entirely. Doesn’t feel like this is a salvageable situation.

    • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      6 months ago

      Approximately $200M, but you can get creative with accounting across multiple products, the way they phrased it.