I don’t think it’s a controversial statement to say that the live service model is dying. Sure, some major players are established and raking in huge amounts of coin with this model.
But with so many new IPs being conjured up to try and muscle in and take a piece of the pie away from the Fortnites and Destinys of the world, we see repeatedly that these new games constantly fall short.
Fans are unwilling to commit to more battle passes, grind, and fork out for cosmetics, so we are seeing these games die in record time. With that in mind, I want to highlight the biggest live service flops ever by ranking those that shut down the fastest and died in the most humiliating way possible.
To be completely fair, we will only consider games that have completed development and launched in a finished state. So games like Hyenas, for example, will not be considered.
10
Lawbreakers
8th August 2017–14 September 2018
We kick things off with a game that, if we’re being fair, had quite a lot going for it initially. Lawbreakers was a rather interesting take on the hero shooter model, aiming to muscle in on Overwatch and Paladins to offer a fresh angle on the hero blueprint.
However, despite some interesting ideas and a loyal, albeit limited, fanbase, the numbers began to dwindle fast, and that can only mean one thing for a game such as this.
The game launched outside the Steam Top 100, suffered due to its PlayStation exclusivity, failed to find the audience it needed, and after a brief spell as a Free-to-Play title, the game shut down barely a year after launch.
It seems there are now some unofficial means of playing this game again in 2024 if you’re super keen, but it seems that despite being a quality FPS game, Lawbreakers is gone for good.
9
Rumbleverse
11th August 2022 – 28th February 2023
While there is a dedicated fan base for fighting games out there in the wild, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that fighting games are hardly the biggest cash cow within the gaming industry. Certainly not since the glory days of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.
By extension, a live-service fighting game was always going to have to feed on scraps among the live-service big hitters, which was the exact scenario that led to Rumbleverse’s downfall.
Despite fun and frantic gameplay and a reasonable player base, Rumbleverse decided to end its existence after just six months.
The last month was a wonderful time for fans of this doomed title as developers gave away paid items for free and revealed all the scheduled modes and content in one fell swoop.
But in the end, this only allowed this game to go out with a bang. As it still closed its doors forever, and all players were given full refunds.
8
Radical Heights
10th April 2018 – 14th May 2018
Live service games, by their very nature, tend to be cash grabs, as they usually survive by selling cosmetic items, offering pay-to-win strategies, and sometimes providing gameplay that is uninspired, to say the least.
However, many would argue that none were quite as shameless as Radical Heights, a game that looked and played like a cheap Fortnite clone, without the polish or charm its inspiration still oozes today.
The game, produced by the same studio behind Lawbreakers, would only last a little over a month before the studio was shut down, and while Radical Height’s Servers still remain active to this day, the game is as dead as dead can be.
Other games like The Finals would have more luck replicating the game show gimmick in their live service game, but sadly for Boss Key Studios, this attempt to pivot to a battle Royale game after Lawbreakers would only cement their demise.
7
Hyperscape
11th August 2020 – 28th April 2022
Ubisoft hasn’t quite learned its lesson with live service games yet, as they are staring down the barrel of another live service failure in the form of Skull and Bones. But they really should have learned that lesson when Hyperscape bottomed out just over a year after launch.
This game’s outlook was initially rather promising, as it was a massive hit on Twitch. But sadly, this initial appeal never actually materialized into a solid player base.
This is surprising, as this game and The Finals aren’t all that different in truth, aside from one being a battle royale and the other being a tactical shooter. However, it seems one game got the rub of the green, and another really didn’t.
One can only hope that Ubisoft sticks to making single-player titles moving forward, but we wouldn’t bet against them making this mistake again.
6
Chocobo GP
10th March 2022 – 31st June 2023
Square Enix has had its fair share of gaming failures in recent years, both within and outside the realm of live service, and one of the biggest flops was Chocobo GP, a kart racer inspired by the fan-favorite racing mini-game from the Final Fantasy series.
One of the core issues with this game was that it was merely a serviceable kart racer and little more, failing to push the sub-genre forward and relying heavily on its close ties to the FF franchise.
This reliance on Final Fantasy’s loyal fans might have been enough, but Square Enix fumbled again, as the game’s nefarious monetization heavily favored those who were willing to invest in the game, and the game would even set timers on when FTP currency would need to be used before disappearing forever.
This ensured fans abandoned this mediocre kart racer, and Chocobo GP would shut down just over a year after launch.
If you’re interested, this game now exists as a fully-fledged standalone release with no microtransactions. But as I mentioned, it’s a pretty threadbare and underwhelming kart racer, even without the questionable money-making tactics.
5
Anthem
22nd February 2019 – 24th February 2021
Anthem seemed at first like the perfect opportunity for redemption for Bioware, an esteemed developer that dropped the ball courtesy of Mass Effect: Andromeda.
However, it would ultimately prove to be the haymaker that knocked the studio out for the count. Anthem was a live-service Looter Shooter that promised the world but, in the end, delivered very little.
While there were some redeeming qualities to the gameplay, the game was littered with bugs, crashed repeatedly, lacked content, was poorly optimized, and failed to offer any sort of clear USP worth even considering overlooking the litany of game-breaking issues.
Bioware eventually fixed many of the issues and even added some content to the game, but it was too little, too late. This wouldn’t help this game rise like a Phoenix, like No Man’s Sky or Cyberpunk 2077. And while it’s not an awful game today, it’s still one of the least successful live service games ever to release.
4
Crucible
20th May 2020 – 9th November 2020
When you think of global conglomerates, you think of Amazon. It’s a company that has a finger in every economic pie you can think of, and as such, it was inevitable that Amazon would eventually expand into the gaming industry.
However, unlike many of its other ventures, entering the gaming field has not been smooth sailing for the company.
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They would eventually find their feet with New World, but their first game, Crucible, was a disaster. This game would release for just a month before being pulled back into beta testing.
Then, rather humiliatingly, the game would remain in beta until the project was eventually scrapped. It was probably the right call as this third-person shooter had little going for it in truth, but even still, for a company with the resources Amazon has, this was a real humbling moment.
3
Concord
23rd August 2024 – 6th September 2024
Next, we have our most recent, and one of the most swift live service failures on record. Concord was/is a Sony-exclusive hero shooter cut from the same cloth as Overwatch, Valorant, and the like.
However, unlike those titles, this game was pitched to fans as a paid title, which immediately saw this IP start on shaky ground.
This might have been okay had the game offered anything new and exciting to the already saturated genre, but Concord failed to excite fans during its beta, leading to the title only managing roughly 100 concurrent players on Steam throughout its first week.
This was enough for Sony to quickly pull the plug and refund all sales for this ill-fated shooter. It remains to be seen if this game will resurface as a free-to-play title, but as it stands, it is one of the quickest live service failures in history.
2
Babylon’s Fall
3rd March 2022 – 27th February 2023
Our runner-up in this live service hall of shame is another Square Enix flop and arguably one of the worst-received games of all time by fans.
Babylon’s Fall was a hack-and-slash title that offered little to excite potential fans. Its progression was confusing and unrewarding, combat was lukewarm, the design was lazy and repetitive, and, most surprisingly, the graphics were weak, which is something you could always historically bank on from Square Enix.
Many critics labeled Babylon’s Fall one of the most boring games of recent years, and fans met it with equal disdain. The game embarrassingly only boasted one concurrent player mere months after launch.
A lot of the games listed here were serviceable titles that just couldn’t find an audience, but Babylon’s Fall was a step beyond.
It was a terrible game that ultimately deserved to fail, and I highly doubt you’ll find someone who will fight this game’s corner—unless you find that one concurrent player, that is.
1
The Day Before
7th December 2023 – 11th December 2023
To wrap things up, we have a game that just about meets the criteria for this list and no more, as The Day Before was only on the market for a handful of days before it was pulled from digital storefronts.
This game was marketed as an MMO survival RPG that, at a glance, seemed like a blend of The Division, The Last of Us, and DayZ. However, it would never come close to matching the quality of these games, as the title was widely regarded as one of the worst games of all time.
The Day Before saga took many twists and turns in December 2023, with the developer claiming it was never intended to be live service at all, for example, despite being marketed as an MMO.
And in the end, this game is widely believed to have been a huge scam, with publishers Mytona seemingly falling victim to developers Fntastic’s elaborate ruse.
But in truth, we don’t think anyone really knows the full truth even today. All we can say for sure is that this is the biggest live service trainwreck ever, and it’s not even close.