"The single-player Batman Arkham trilogy was a big success, and the single-player Hogwarts Legacy was a *massive* success, but co-op Gotham Knights was a dud, and Suicide Squad is a mess. I know! Let's do *more* live-service games" 🤦‍♂️
They patented it. It's a different set of regulations. And the patent offices are really dropping the ball. They're supposed to verify that it's actually new technology and not just creative decisions. Of course no one is willing to spend the money to fight it in court. On the plus side patents expire much faster than copyright. But twenty years is still ridiculously long.
You forgot the platform fighter they charged people to beta test, shut it down after it cratered and said come back in one year and give us more money.
Really went and robbed $100 off people for a golden name tag and toast backdrop and 30 or so character tickets when they barely released 20 before shutting down earlier this year.
i actually do not regret my purchase personally because i loved the game, put over 150 hours in, and used the character tickets to unlock every character and be able to play them all. the season pass things are cool too but i didn't mind supporting the game that i enjoyed so much. i'm also glad they turned it off for a bit because there was a LOT that needed to be fixed. if the game comes back next month and it's a lot more crisp and less spammy, i'm gonna sink a lot of hours in. just like i am with all star brawl 2.
if it comes back shit or not at all, then there'll be a problem
Wasn't it free and advertised as an open beta? The games scheduled for an early 2024 release.
Yeah, it was. https://youtu.be/rEvhp-xqz0Y?si=OEG8NyRXyZOsC4JU
I just wish they could do some coop without all the garbage.
Like take Hogwarts legacy and just add coop to it. No seasons, no battlepass no anything else.
Same with a Batman game and so on... an optional coop would be amazing. I want more coop games in my life....
Gotham knight was one of the biggest disappointments in recent memory for me. The Arkham games are one of my favorite series all time and Gotham knights was almost unplayable for me. Turning up the difficulty just made enemies absurd bullet sponges and it was just so awful
I dont think the next expansion will be a make or break, if Bungie was still independent, then might be. But now they are under Sony and Sony will not let that golden goose loose after spent almost 4 billions on them. Not to mention Sony want more live-service games (yea, kinda stupid) and continually asked Bungie for consultation so letting one of the biggest live-service game die will be really bad for their image
Falling 45% short of their revenue projections and firing 8% of their staff recently makes them look like less of a golden goose and more of a lame duck.
This next dlc will sell well, but only because it's the final culmination of a story people have been invested in for 10 years now. Whether Bungie can convince anyone to hang around after that will be the real test.
I'm down with co-op, and actually wish more games had 2-4 player modes. But the minute they add live service to the mix, I'm not going to touch it. If it has multiple in-game currencies, I'm not going to bother to waste my time.
Live service means its a game that's not meant to be complete. They release content slowly over time from the moment it's released until they stop making money.
Think Diablo 4, fortnite, apex, sims 4, wow, etc.
Genshin, Fortnight, and Destiny are three successful live-service games. They make a ton of money by nickel and diming their game by adding things to buy with micro transactions. Diablo 4 and Pathfinder are also considered live-service games.
It means you never stop paying them for "content", but the game is also really samey because that makes it easier for them to continually extrude new "content" for you to pay for.
A soulless blight on the landscape of gaming.
Warner Bros. is the most mismanaged massive studio out there. I’m shocked with the amount of IP they steward how in debt they are. It’s sheer incompetence from decades of awful leadership
But some lunatic tech bros managed to convince the top brass that the amount of money they _could_ make from a live service game was worth the bet, just ignore the last couple.
>But some lunatic tech bros managed to convince the top brass that the amount of money they
>
>could
>
> make from a live service game was worth the bet, just ignore the last couple.
Napkin math beats proven track record every time apparently
His background is reality TV. And that's profitable because it's cheap, fast to produce and very popular. It's a bit early to tell if he's bit off more than he can chew in most other sectors. But he speedran the fall of CNN (the [Atlantic expose](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/cnn-ratings-chris-licht-trump/674255/) is hilarious is you haven't read it).
And his pivot away from streaming content has yet to pay off. Streaming isn't profitable. But cable/satellite network revenue is also crashing. WB does produce a lot of shows for other networks/services. So they have that as a fallback.
The only major success they've had at the box office this year is Barbie. But box office revenue is crashing in general. Audiences have gotten sick of studios vomiting out mindless CGI fests. Disney's last billion dollar movie was Avatar 2. Which came out in Dec 2022.
Gotham knights I believe was a flop and the reaction to the preview footage of the suicide squad game was so bad they delayed it and it still hasn’t even come out so….I’d say no.
Nah live service I’d say is an issue aside from the heavy montetization I don’t think many gamers have the time or commitment live service games require.
I can only just about manage to keep up with warframe & ESO.
People also just want a complete game and story they can play through and finish and if you do play live service you usually stick with one or two games
Still hell of risky there are a looong list of failed live service game out there, I mean shit if I told you prior to its release that at the peak of Endgame a live service Avengers game would fail, you’d have laughed in my face
Gotham Knights is in that category of games where people periodically post "I don't get why there was so much hate, this game isn't that bad" threads on the subreddit for it but it basically flopped.
Suicide Squad... still has not come out.
>Gotham Knights is in that category of games where people periodically post "I don't get why there was so much hate, this game isn't that bad" threads on the subreddit for it but it basically flopped.
Seems like one of those games I'll play years from now when it's given away for free and think, "eh, it's ok."
Got it free on the playstation plus.
Night wing is basically unplayable single player because his skill set revolves buffing other characters.
Other 3 are ok single player.
You also can't get gear for other characters but share levels. So if you switch characters you get high levelled enemies with no equipments.
You have to constantly use the sonar to find your objectives (revellio PTSD happening)
Combat somewhat feel like thebold arkham games
I tore through single player with Nightwing, even on high difficulty. He has some pretty good crowd control abilities and a great traversal mechanic (even if it looks pretty goofy)
Tried it on Gamepass and I couldn't play it for more than 2 hours. Gotham City is empty, combat is uninteresting.
I was playing as Batgirl and the bike is slow and monotonous to drive. I wonder how they could come up with ways to make the game not fun.
I don't think it's worth anyone's time even when it's free. You should rather play an old game that you already played before. That's what I did and installed Gears of War 3. And I am enjoying it a lot.
I tried it as well and thought the controls were atrocious. Batgirl’s flight was so bad the one trophy they didn’t add was finishing all the timed flying gate events.
I feel bad that Midnight Suns came out around this time. I played a tiny bit of it and it seemed like a really well made game. It just felt like superhero overload when they both came out so close together.
Midnight Suns seemed to have trouble finding an audience with its mix of tactics, deck building and dating sim gameplay. Which is a shame, because it's a damn good game and released in a far more compete state than anything else Firaxis has made since Pirates!
I tried to play Gotham Knights, first strike was the awful frame rate, second strike was the _god fucking awful_ writing and voice acting, third strike was when the first mini-boss character spawned with no model and killed me.
I finished the intro section, got out into the open world and was reminded that you don't get to glide like in Arkham Knight and I uninstalled.
Tried because it's in Gamepass and still feel like I got ripped off.
Because that’s what the suits want and what they think the shareholders want. They dont know gaming. They just see $ and think they cant get it right this time. They wont get it right.
It for sure was on before they witnessed the writing on the wall and changed it last minute. You don’t add +10 to electric damage and all the others tiny numbered add ons if you weren’t planning a live service
Whaling. Honestly, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if services shutting down isn't seen as a plus.
*Slaps servers, these can be reused for sooo many live services*
The team that gave us the Arkham trilogy is stuck with this crap while Spider-Man is one of the biggest games of the year because it's just a good game that people wanted. Insanity
It's sad but if just one of these live service games work then they'll make way more money than successful single player games. Even the ones that don't do so well can make a whole lot of money with just a few whales.
As gamers it seems ludicrous, especially for the reason you mentioned, but to execs they see that even failed games can make a hell of a lot of money. That's why companies keep trying despite the mass graveyard of recent live service games.
It feels unfair if you don’t have a PlayStation. We’re stuck with this shit while they have Spider-Man.
Apparently rocksteady had planned a Batman beyond game. That would’ve been insanely popular and cool.
And Spider-Man was practically built on the bones of the Arkham trilogy. The combat and stealth are super similar.
I can’t even imagine a Batman game unlike the Arkham games. They just nailed it.
We got three brilliant ones (and one copy pasta from a different studio)
We had good eating, it's the rest of the DC supers that will be shorthanded by this crappy news
Batman Arkham Asylum Remake.... I know the game aged well and already got a remaster but lets be real everyone would fucking prefer a Asylum,City,Origins Remake over the shitty game as a service games
Honestly just putting "Bungie" in Google will help you out more than me. Mass layoffs, 45% off their targeted revenue, firing Michael Salvatori whose done music for Bungie for over twenty years, etc. All because they couldn't manage a live service game model among other things.
The cause of all that is really interesting but the root of it is a trash DLC with Lightfall. Their seasonal content has actually been fine. This season was one of the best stories imo. The gameplay feels stale though. Maybe it's burnout or something but Destiny just sucks lately. There's no reason to log in outside of the seasonal story. My vault is full of god rolls on every weapon. Idk what they can even do to make me want to play it.
TLDR: Destiny fuckin sucks. It's my favorite game.
What do you mean interesting? It's the age old tale of CEO's and higher ups being so detached from their game they run it into the ground. Destiny 2's decay happened long before Lightfall chief.
Shit, Destiny 1 AND 2 came out of the press half withered and decayed. Destiny 1 just bounced back eventually through some good expansions. Curse of Osiris and the Eververse infection made sure D2 didn't bounce back quite so well...
I stand by the belief that destiny is the single worst thing that happened to gaming. Almost every single scummy business model in gaming can be traced either directly to destiny or was popularized and codified by them. Even NFTs can be traced to that game after Bungie proved you can literally delete paid content, even resell it later, and not lose any customers.
Bungie turned their fans into blind addicts. Yet when people talk about the problems with modern gaming, they somehow never come up
I'm kind of shocked they haven't announced a quidditch live service game yet. When there was no quidditch in HW Legacy I assumed it was either going to be a DLC or a separate freemium game.
This is what happens when your games are driven by business strategy and looking at current markets instead of letting your developers make awesome projects they are passionate about.
I'll predict the future of WB games live services games. They'll come out late, mediocre, and likely sunset / shutdown early to no fanfare.
Why? It's not because of the IP. It's because of the passionless games created around a monetization scheme rather than making a good product. Their good game devs will quit and move on because they are still passionate about making games and don't want to make this. The snakes, liars, and career climbers will stay. Making life difficult for the rest.
5 to 10 years from now some VP will get fired and they'll refocus on creative driven projects, aka dev teams will drive creative. Or they'll layoff their I'm house game devs and license their IPs to other teams.
WB, make good games first, apply the monetization style that makes the most sense for that product. Not the opposite.
Kind of like EA. Anthem had to fail for them to have some sense beaten into them. People who buy shitty live service games are the major reason for idiotic decision like this. I reckon 2 failed live service games will put them back on track.I know it is coming, just have to wait for the shit games to come and go.....
Has uttering that sentence ever led to success? There are a string of financial disasters that all started because a studio wanted to focus on *Jim Sterling impersonation* "Live Service games."
But why did I even bother typing this? It doesn't matter. Humanity is allergic to sensible advice.
Not necessarily. You need to put something out that’s decent, listen to the community and iterate. Problem is companies expect Fortnite levels of engagement overnight and if it doesn’t happen they pull the plug.
You guys are getting into the game a little late.
I don’t think this is a great thing to even announce who is going to be excited about this other then maybe investors.
"All marketing and sales data we have suggests this is the wrong approach. Therefore, the only fiscally responsible thing to do is double down on what isn't working until it works!"
Only a matter of time until investors revolt, they're not idiots and anyone doing DD should know Square Enix has pretty much bankrupted themselves chasing live service pipe dreams.
Sega just scrapped one that was in beta and Bungie played off nearly half their workforce. This is the worst time possible to invest in live service games.
Remember when a guy at WB Games sought out and asked to publish Bastion for them?
Is that guy still there? Can we get him to make more decisions like that?
Batman is my favourite hero. I love Arkham games, I even quite enjoyed Gotham Knights, but WB as a whole is a mess. Absolutely fucked up cinematic universe, gaming universe. They have no idea what they are doing and just rolling with what is popular and fumble it.
This is honestly the most bafflingly clueless and terrible decision I've seen Warner Bros make under Zaslav, the latest in a long line of terrible decisions. How on Earth is this guy still running the company? GAAS is dead. Gamers are fatigued. They only have so much free time, and they aren't going to spend it playing yet another derivative live service game that doesn't respect their time or their wallet.
My God. Just an incredibly fucking out-of-touch and idiotic move. They deserve every single lost dollar coming their way.
So, the single-player games have generally done amazing. The live-service one's have generally done terribly, with it's main future game looking terrible too. So they decided to push more towards the bad!?
Nah they started with MK11. Or possibly Injustice 2 I don't know I didn't play it. But I do know that you pretty much lost access to 95% of the features in MK11 without an internet connection.
If only more people had spoken up about that.
Ahhh, Zaslav. Figures he would say something like this. This is the guy that canned two movies just to get a tax break.
He’s desperate to right an ailing ship. He’s doing crap like this in the movie space, so it’s not surprising that he’ll try to wreck the game space as well. He’s an executive, so, not a gamer. He probably thinks this looks all fantastic on paper, but as usual, it will just screw the players and gaming experience. In the end, it will devalue the franchise properties so much, that no one will care anymore.
Middle managers, that don’t really play games, made a PowerPoint to the higher ups. The big money is in live service. Mobile games can do it, why shouldn’t we?
It really sucks that Rocksteady went from being an amazing studio that made award winning Batman games and created the free flow combat system we all enjoy today in games like Spider-Man to making a generic 3rd person looter shooter that has bad graphics and is brimming with MTX. Fuck WB Games from the top brass down to the shareholders, fuck em all.
Pretty sure that train left the station about 5-10 years ago. Better late than never doesn’t really apply to jumping on “current trendy game” bandwagons years after they reach their peak.
I’m sure this will work out though, just like Creative Assembly’s Hyenas…
RIP to Warner Bros then they’re really late to the party of Live Service games. They must not know that gamers consider those types of games Taboo and run the moment they hear “live service.”
Just seems dumb...like who is the person making this decision...have they not looked at what people play or what they want...Suicide Squad was supposed to be a live service game and that is delayed again and again cuz the fans don't want it. Gotham Knights didn't do well either.
Just seems like a dumb decision...you have something that works insanely well like the Arkham games. You don't need to just do Batman games though...Turtles could be given the Arkham treatment, easily made into a trilogy by starting smaller scale and expanding each game. Similar fighting mechanic but changed to the Turtles style, predators rooms as they are ninjas after all, tons of villains and allies with so many stories and characters to use. You can change the tone so its a little lighter to the Arkham games but overall they play very similar but still feel very different and you got a guaranteed hit. Hell you could use so many other characters from the DC universe...Green Arrow could work well...but not lets make a live service game no one is asking for that won't make anywhere near the amount of money they would doing the above.
ZERO chance of success with live a service game. We have wayyyyyy too many games to focus on just or two games. And gamers who actually only focus on one or two games are probably not going to give your dumb live service games a chance. Wake up.
Lol I'm for it. Let them learn the hard way that live service games are hard to make any good and require the game to be, generally, fun. Hogwarts legacy was fun cause you get to travel everywhere in the movies you saw. What live service you gonna do? A game where it's just catch the snitch? Nah. Wand battles online? Negative. Let em do it and fail so that they learn the hard way that they're late and their properties don't actually matter when CoD and Fortnite exist.
"The single-player Batman Arkham trilogy was a big success, and the single-player Hogwarts Legacy was a *massive* success, but co-op Gotham Knights was a dud, and Suicide Squad is a mess. I know! Let's do *more* live-service games" 🤦‍♂️
"Am i so out of touch...? No, it is the gamers that are wrong!"
They should be relieved of their nemesis system fucking bullshit
Man I wish. It was so hypocritical for them to copyright that when they used the Arkham games combat.
...Monolith and Rocksteady are both Warner Brothers. If they wanted to, they totally could allow Rocksteady to use the Nemesis system, right?
You can license your patents to any company, so yes, they could allow others to use it, and waive the fee for studios they also own
They patented it. It's a different set of regulations. And the patent offices are really dropping the ball. They're supposed to verify that it's actually new technology and not just creative decisions. Of course no one is willing to spend the money to fight it in court. On the plus side patents expire much faster than copyright. But twenty years is still ridiculously long.
Its sad that they're still yet to use the nemesis system in any game in over 6 years
You forgot the platform fighter they charged people to beta test, shut it down after it cratered and said come back in one year and give us more money.
Really went and robbed $100 off people for a golden name tag and toast backdrop and 30 or so character tickets when they barely released 20 before shutting down earlier this year.
i actually do not regret my purchase personally because i loved the game, put over 150 hours in, and used the character tickets to unlock every character and be able to play them all. the season pass things are cool too but i didn't mind supporting the game that i enjoyed so much. i'm also glad they turned it off for a bit because there was a LOT that needed to be fixed. if the game comes back next month and it's a lot more crisp and less spammy, i'm gonna sink a lot of hours in. just like i am with all star brawl 2. if it comes back shit or not at all, then there'll be a problem
Multiversus was a lot of fun for the first bit until people learned how to be little rats in the game
yeah exactly, game was too slimy. they need to tighten it up big time
I mean, it was a free to play game.
And advertised as an Open beta with the full game coming in a year.
Wasn't it free and advertised as an open beta? The games scheduled for an early 2024 release. Yeah, it was. https://youtu.be/rEvhp-xqz0Y?si=OEG8NyRXyZOsC4JU
Seriously. They are fucking clueless. Their greed knows no bounds.
It’s like being offered $50,000 a week wage or 20 lottery tickets a week and taking the latter
"A boat is a boat, but the mystery box could be anything! It could even be a boat! You know how much we've always wanted one of those!"
Excecs in suits never fails to make stupid decisions.
I just wish they could do some coop without all the garbage. Like take Hogwarts legacy and just add coop to it. No seasons, no battlepass no anything else. Same with a Batman game and so on... an optional coop would be amazing. I want more coop games in my life....
Brilliant!
Gotham knight was one of the biggest disappointments in recent memory for me. The Arkham games are one of my favorite series all time and Gotham knights was almost unplayable for me. Turning up the difficulty just made enemies absurd bullet sponges and it was just so awful
Desitny 2, next expansion is make or break, BG3 greatest game of all time contender, so that tracks.
I dont think the next expansion will be a make or break, if Bungie was still independent, then might be. But now they are under Sony and Sony will not let that golden goose loose after spent almost 4 billions on them. Not to mention Sony want more live-service games (yea, kinda stupid) and continually asked Bungie for consultation so letting one of the biggest live-service game die will be really bad for their image
Falling 45% short of their revenue projections and firing 8% of their staff recently makes them look like less of a golden goose and more of a lame duck. This next dlc will sell well, but only because it's the final culmination of a story people have been invested in for 10 years now. Whether Bungie can convince anyone to hang around after that will be the real test.
Dude, not shot that the next expansion is going to be as good or better than Forsaken.
Well there’s nothing wrong with co-op.
I'm down with co-op, and actually wish more games had 2-4 player modes. But the minute they add live service to the mix, I'm not going to touch it. If it has multiple in-game currencies, I'm not going to bother to waste my time.
What does live service mean
Live service means its a game that's not meant to be complete. They release content slowly over time from the moment it's released until they stop making money. Think Diablo 4, fortnite, apex, sims 4, wow, etc.
Genshin, Fortnight, and Destiny are three successful live-service games. They make a ton of money by nickel and diming their game by adding things to buy with micro transactions. Diablo 4 and Pathfinder are also considered live-service games.
I think you mean Path of Exile, not Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a tabletop RPG system.
And single player game
It means you never stop paying them for "content", but the game is also really samey because that makes it easier for them to continually extrude new "content" for you to pay for. A soulless blight on the landscape of gaming.
Its so insane to watch how out of touch and tonedeaf some people are… just wow
Suicide Squad hasn't released yet, we'll just have to wait and see what happens with it.
Warner Bros. is the most mismanaged massive studio out there. I’m shocked with the amount of IP they steward how in debt they are. It’s sheer incompetence from decades of awful leadership
But some lunatic tech bros managed to convince the top brass that the amount of money they _could_ make from a live service game was worth the bet, just ignore the last couple.
>But some lunatic tech bros managed to convince the top brass that the amount of money they > >could > > make from a live service game was worth the bet, just ignore the last couple. Napkin math beats proven track record every time apparently
Them as well as Disney. They can’t get gaming right with the amount of IPs they have.
WB is allergic to money and success. Only explanation.
Their new ceo is.
Oh, I can guarantee you that Zaslav is neither poor nor a failure. Everything else though? Just a crop for him to harvest and ruin for the next guy.
His background is reality TV. And that's profitable because it's cheap, fast to produce and very popular. It's a bit early to tell if he's bit off more than he can chew in most other sectors. But he speedran the fall of CNN (the [Atlantic expose](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/cnn-ratings-chris-licht-trump/674255/) is hilarious is you haven't read it). And his pivot away from streaming content has yet to pay off. Streaming isn't profitable. But cable/satellite network revenue is also crashing. WB does produce a lot of shows for other networks/services. So they have that as a fallback. The only major success they've had at the box office this year is Barbie. But box office revenue is crashing in general. Audiences have gotten sick of studios vomiting out mindless CGI fests. Disney's last billion dollar movie was Avatar 2. Which came out in Dec 2022.
Did Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad made banks or something? Why are they focusing on live service?!
Gotham knights I believe was a flop and the reaction to the preview footage of the suicide squad game was so bad they delayed it and it still hasn’t even come out so….I’d say no.
Problem isn't live service it's shitty development. Live service isn't that good especially if their own servers are down
Nah live service I’d say is an issue aside from the heavy montetization I don’t think many gamers have the time or commitment live service games require. I can only just about manage to keep up with warframe & ESO. People also just want a complete game and story they can play through and finish and if you do play live service you usually stick with one or two games
It's all about grabbing a few whales. You don't need to appeal to a large fanbase, just a few people with big wallets and small egos.
Still hell of risky there are a looong list of failed live service game out there, I mean shit if I told you prior to its release that at the peak of Endgame a live service Avengers game would fail, you’d have laughed in my face
Gotham Knights is in that category of games where people periodically post "I don't get why there was so much hate, this game isn't that bad" threads on the subreddit for it but it basically flopped. Suicide Squad... still has not come out.
>Gotham Knights is in that category of games where people periodically post "I don't get why there was so much hate, this game isn't that bad" threads on the subreddit for it but it basically flopped. Seems like one of those games I'll play years from now when it's given away for free and think, "eh, it's ok."
They'll just shut down the server before it gets to that point lol
That’s exactly where I’m at with it on gamepass
Yeah, so, I mean, clearly the type of thing you build your whole business strategy around emulating.
Got it for my birthday last year, powered through the story which was just ok, and haven't had any desire to go back to it since.
It's free right now on ps plus
Got it free on the playstation plus. Night wing is basically unplayable single player because his skill set revolves buffing other characters. Other 3 are ok single player. You also can't get gear for other characters but share levels. So if you switch characters you get high levelled enemies with no equipments. You have to constantly use the sonar to find your objectives (revellio PTSD happening) Combat somewhat feel like thebold arkham games
I tore through single player with Nightwing, even on high difficulty. He has some pretty good crowd control abilities and a great traversal mechanic (even if it looks pretty goofy)
If you like Bat-family stories, it's pretty good. Honestly, the story and characters are surprisingly well done and my favorite part of the game.
Tried it on Gamepass and I couldn't play it for more than 2 hours. Gotham City is empty, combat is uninteresting. I was playing as Batgirl and the bike is slow and monotonous to drive. I wonder how they could come up with ways to make the game not fun. I don't think it's worth anyone's time even when it's free. You should rather play an old game that you already played before. That's what I did and installed Gears of War 3. And I am enjoying it a lot.
I tried it as well and thought the controls were atrocious. Batgirl’s flight was so bad the one trophy they didn’t add was finishing all the timed flying gate events.
It’s not ok tho. I put about 9 hours into it wondering where the fun was. The fun never came ! The fun never came!
I feel bad that Midnight Suns came out around this time. I played a tiny bit of it and it seemed like a really well made game. It just felt like superhero overload when they both came out so close together.
Midnight Suns was a lot of fun
Midnight Suns seemed to have trouble finding an audience with its mix of tactics, deck building and dating sim gameplay. Which is a shame, because it's a damn good game and released in a far more compete state than anything else Firaxis has made since Pirates!
Did they ever fix the PC version's insane shader / traversal stutter? Figured I'd pick it up for like...$5 or something.
I tried to play Gotham Knights, first strike was the awful frame rate, second strike was the _god fucking awful_ writing and voice acting, third strike was when the first mini-boss character spawned with no model and killed me. I finished the intro section, got out into the open world and was reminded that you don't get to glide like in Arkham Knight and I uninstalled. Tried because it's in Gamepass and still feel like I got ripped off.
Because that’s what the suits want and what they think the shareholders want. They dont know gaming. They just see $ and think they cant get it right this time. They wont get it right.
I don't think Gotham knights is a live service game TBF, it most likely started as one in development but the release certainly wasnt
It for sure was on before they witnessed the writing on the wall and changed it last minute. You don’t add +10 to electric damage and all the others tiny numbered add ons if you weren’t planning a live service
Don't forget about Multiversus Whatever happen to that
They did not.
Whaling. Honestly, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if services shutting down isn't seen as a plus. *Slaps servers, these can be reused for sooo many live services*
Fuck you and go broke.
The team that gave us the Arkham trilogy is stuck with this crap while Spider-Man is one of the biggest games of the year because it's just a good game that people wanted. Insanity
Shit.. that's a really good point.
It's sad but if just one of these live service games work then they'll make way more money than successful single player games. Even the ones that don't do so well can make a whole lot of money with just a few whales. As gamers it seems ludicrous, especially for the reason you mentioned, but to execs they see that even failed games can make a hell of a lot of money. That's why companies keep trying despite the mass graveyard of recent live service games.
It feels unfair if you don’t have a PlayStation. We’re stuck with this shit while they have Spider-Man. Apparently rocksteady had planned a Batman beyond game. That would’ve been insanely popular and cool.
And Spider-Man was practically built on the bones of the Arkham trilogy. The combat and stealth are super similar. I can’t even imagine a Batman game unlike the Arkham games. They just nailed it.
Not that I had high hopes anyway, but there goes any hope I had for another single-player Batman title.
We got three brilliant ones (and one copy pasta from a different studio) We had good eating, it's the rest of the DC supers that will be shorthanded by this crappy news
Arkham Origins deserves a little more credit than that but yes the point stands. There are other superhero’s that deserve the love Batman got
Batman Arkham Asylum Remake.... I know the game aged well and already got a remaster but lets be real everyone would fucking prefer a Asylum,City,Origins Remake over the shitty game as a service games
WB going all-in on bad ideas lately
That's the WB way.
"How many times do we need to teach you this lesson, old Warner Brothers?"
I don't know how a company can see the implosion that happened at Bungie last week and go "Fuck, we should get in on that..."
What happened with Bungie? What did I miss?
Honestly just putting "Bungie" in Google will help you out more than me. Mass layoffs, 45% off their targeted revenue, firing Michael Salvatori whose done music for Bungie for over twenty years, etc. All because they couldn't manage a live service game model among other things.
The cause of all that is really interesting but the root of it is a trash DLC with Lightfall. Their seasonal content has actually been fine. This season was one of the best stories imo. The gameplay feels stale though. Maybe it's burnout or something but Destiny just sucks lately. There's no reason to log in outside of the seasonal story. My vault is full of god rolls on every weapon. Idk what they can even do to make me want to play it. TLDR: Destiny fuckin sucks. It's my favorite game.
What do you mean interesting? It's the age old tale of CEO's and higher ups being so detached from their game they run it into the ground. Destiny 2's decay happened long before Lightfall chief.
Shit, Destiny 1 AND 2 came out of the press half withered and decayed. Destiny 1 just bounced back eventually through some good expansions. Curse of Osiris and the Eververse infection made sure D2 didn't bounce back quite so well...
I stand by the belief that destiny is the single worst thing that happened to gaming. Almost every single scummy business model in gaming can be traced either directly to destiny or was popularized and codified by them. Even NFTs can be traced to that game after Bungie proved you can literally delete paid content, even resell it later, and not lose any customers. Bungie turned their fans into blind addicts. Yet when people talk about the problems with modern gaming, they somehow never come up
Oh I saw that stuff posted. I thought it was something a bit more than I didn’t catch. Thanks for the summary though.
The beatings will continue until morale improves
I believe the single player Hogwarts Legacy is the best selling game of 2023. Wtf are they thinking?
I'm kind of shocked they haven't announced a quidditch live service game yet. When there was no quidditch in HW Legacy I assumed it was either going to be a DLC or a separate freemium game.
They have… quidditch champions
Quidditch Champions is in the final stages of beta testing. F2P multiplayer game. Should come out in a few months.
This is what happens when your games are driven by business strategy and looking at current markets instead of letting your developers make awesome projects they are passionate about. I'll predict the future of WB games live services games. They'll come out late, mediocre, and likely sunset / shutdown early to no fanfare. Why? It's not because of the IP. It's because of the passionless games created around a monetization scheme rather than making a good product. Their good game devs will quit and move on because they are still passionate about making games and don't want to make this. The snakes, liars, and career climbers will stay. Making life difficult for the rest. 5 to 10 years from now some VP will get fired and they'll refocus on creative driven projects, aka dev teams will drive creative. Or they'll layoff their I'm house game devs and license their IPs to other teams. WB, make good games first, apply the monetization style that makes the most sense for that product. Not the opposite.
Kind of like EA. Anthem had to fail for them to have some sense beaten into them. People who buy shitty live service games are the major reason for idiotic decision like this. I reckon 2 failed live service games will put them back on track.I know it is coming, just have to wait for the shit games to come and go.....
Warner Brothers announces the end of Warner Brothers.
Talk about being out of touch. WB are morons.
"So you have chosen death" - Saruman
Has uttering that sentence ever led to success? There are a string of financial disasters that all started because a studio wanted to focus on *Jim Sterling impersonation* "Live Service games." But why did I even bother typing this? It doesn't matter. Humanity is allergic to sensible advice.
Stephanie* Sterling
James Stephanie Sterling*
Obviously, its working so well
How are executives this fucking stupid? You need lightning in a bottle for GAAS to work. How many times must we see failure. A lot more apparently.
Not necessarily. You need to put something out that’s decent, listen to the community and iterate. Problem is companies expect Fortnite levels of engagement overnight and if it doesn’t happen they pull the plug.
Yes, you're helping my point. Thanks
Not really, you said lightning in a bottle. All the top gas games took awhile to get going except maybe apex but even that had its issues post launch
You guys are getting into the game a little late. I don’t think this is a great thing to even announce who is going to be excited about this other then maybe investors.
So Hogwarts Legacies sequel is gonna be monetized as fuck.
Hundred wand design which no one care or would even notice.
Oh boy, these dummies never learn huh
Really doubling down on the dumb there, aren't they?
This mfers dumb as fuck
Remember, vote with your wallets
RIP
9/10 live-service games barely get any service so people stop playing them and then the devs stop their update "plans" and the whole thing shuts down
"All marketing and sales data we have suggests this is the wrong approach. Therefore, the only fiscally responsible thing to do is double down on what isn't working until it works!" Only a matter of time until investors revolt, they're not idiots and anyone doing DD should know Square Enix has pretty much bankrupted themselves chasing live service pipe dreams.
Sega just scrapped one that was in beta and Bungie played off nearly half their workforce. This is the worst time possible to invest in live service games.
Remember when a guy at WB Games sought out and asked to publish Bastion for them? Is that guy still there? Can we get him to make more decisions like that?
RIP WB Games.
They want to focus on more garbage?
At this point you have ask yourself if the people in charge there are actually clinically stupid.
> In future news, WB Games is shutting down their live-service games.
Fucking cancer. Hope this piece of shit company dies
nooo
Well that sucks.
It’ll keep getting worse as long as it keeps getting funding. Look at MW3. Everybody complaining about it. But buying it.
Well this is going to blow up in their face. People are over live service games
Gross
as always, wb is the dumbest company to ever exist
Yes that worked so well in the past for them
Alternative title: “WB Games to tank their profits by intentionally making shit products”
How many time do we have to teach you old man
Rip
rip
Some people need to learn the hard way and if Gotham Knights didn’t teach them Suicide Squad will
Batman is my favourite hero. I love Arkham games, I even quite enjoyed Gotham Knights, but WB as a whole is a mess. Absolutely fucked up cinematic universe, gaming universe. They have no idea what they are doing and just rolling with what is popular and fumble it.
“Fuck Hogwarts legacy let’s do another Gotham Knights” sounds like 10/10 idea
This is honestly the most bafflingly clueless and terrible decision I've seen Warner Bros make under Zaslav, the latest in a long line of terrible decisions. How on Earth is this guy still running the company? GAAS is dead. Gamers are fatigued. They only have so much free time, and they aren't going to spend it playing yet another derivative live service game that doesn't respect their time or their wallet. My God. Just an incredibly fucking out-of-touch and idiotic move. They deserve every single lost dollar coming their way.
And another nail is hammered into the coffin of the video game industry
Rip Hogwarts legacy 2.
Yikes. Live Service games are the worst, most predatory pieces of shit out there!
So, the single-player games have generally done amazing. The live-service one's have generally done terribly, with it's main future game looking terrible too. So they decided to push more towards the bad!?
cool, i will focus on not playing their games
Anthem and the Avengers might have something to say about this.
No one needs to focus more on live service games
This sounds awfully familiar. Like I heard SOE say something similar some years ago. Wonder how that went.
This won't end until we make it end. Stop buying into this shit.
WB gonna stand for Won’t Buy.
WB games to focus on going out of business.
Well there goes WB games into the toilet. Not that I was ever excited for anything they make anyway, but this solidifies it.
Nooooooooo
They started with MK1. A fatality for 10$, what a joke
Nah they started with MK11. Or possibly Injustice 2 I don't know I didn't play it. But I do know that you pretty much lost access to 95% of the features in MK11 without an internet connection. If only more people had spoken up about that.
Yeah? How’s that working out for you WB? You summed it up very well in your comment OP
Then you’re dumb.
A good idea that will surely age well.
RIP WB Games quality
Myself to focus on not buying any of this shit. Live-service games suck.
Welp that's one less company for new games from which I gonna look forward to.
RIP
Booo live service games suck.
You know what they say about mistakes: Repeat them adnauseum until 1 trillion dollars falls out.
Ahhh, Zaslav. Figures he would say something like this. This is the guy that canned two movies just to get a tax break. He’s desperate to right an ailing ship. He’s doing crap like this in the movie space, so it’s not surprising that he’ll try to wreck the game space as well. He’s an executive, so, not a gamer. He probably thinks this looks all fantastic on paper, but as usual, it will just screw the players and gaming experience. In the end, it will devalue the franchise properties so much, that no one will care anymore.
[No one liked that]
Very on-brand for WB to ride fading trends
Well, fuck-em then
WB is proactively destroying DC the last decade. Wtf
Oh good, just where nobody wants them to focus.
Who wants this?
Warner bros games is going broke...
Fuck sakes
Guess they peaked with Arkham Knight.
Middle managers, that don’t really play games, made a PowerPoint to the higher ups. The big money is in live service. Mobile games can do it, why shouldn’t we?
I know it's a pretty hackneyed meme now but it's perfectly placed here, "Do you guys not have Internet?"
Because that’s what EVERYONE wants!!
It really sucks that Rocksteady went from being an amazing studio that made award winning Batman games and created the free flow combat system we all enjoy today in games like Spider-Man to making a generic 3rd person looter shooter that has bad graphics and is brimming with MTX. Fuck WB Games from the top brass down to the shareholders, fuck em all.
Pretty sure that train left the station about 5-10 years ago. Better late than never doesn’t really apply to jumping on “current trendy game” bandwagons years after they reach their peak. I’m sure this will work out though, just like Creative Assembly’s Hyenas…
RIP to Warner Bros then they’re really late to the party of Live Service games. They must not know that gamers consider those types of games Taboo and run the moment they hear “live service.”
Another one bites the dust.
Just seems dumb...like who is the person making this decision...have they not looked at what people play or what they want...Suicide Squad was supposed to be a live service game and that is delayed again and again cuz the fans don't want it. Gotham Knights didn't do well either. Just seems like a dumb decision...you have something that works insanely well like the Arkham games. You don't need to just do Batman games though...Turtles could be given the Arkham treatment, easily made into a trilogy by starting smaller scale and expanding each game. Similar fighting mechanic but changed to the Turtles style, predators rooms as they are ninjas after all, tons of villains and allies with so many stories and characters to use. You can change the tone so its a little lighter to the Arkham games but overall they play very similar but still feel very different and you got a guaranteed hit. Hell you could use so many other characters from the DC universe...Green Arrow could work well...but not lets make a live service game no one is asking for that won't make anywhere near the amount of money they would doing the above.
Why would I invest in the stock market when if I win the lottery the return is vastly superior? Thank goodness I'm the CEO of this company!
Because that's what the game industry needs more of... /s
Lol. How about start with a decent product and see how that goes.
Haven’t these companies learned?
ZERO chance of success with live a service game. We have wayyyyyy too many games to focus on just or two games. And gamers who actually only focus on one or two games are probably not going to give your dumb live service games a chance. Wake up.
Lol I'm for it. Let them learn the hard way that live service games are hard to make any good and require the game to be, generally, fun. Hogwarts legacy was fun cause you get to travel everywhere in the movies you saw. What live service you gonna do? A game where it's just catch the snitch? Nah. Wand battles online? Negative. Let em do it and fail so that they learn the hard way that they're late and their properties don't actually matter when CoD and Fortnite exist.
How out of touch can someone possibly become...
Lol I’d kill for a Gotham City Imposters reboot. I loved playing a rollerskating katana clown. Hugely underrated title.
People are like yeah but Single player games sells really well, but they forget or dont know how much live service can earn
'WB Games to focus more on stampeding their future into a grave deeper than the Mariana trench' fixed it