The Failure Of Marvel's Avengers Has Far Reaching Consequences

thegamer.com:

With Marvel’s Avengers seemingly winding down, it may seem like the damage has already been done. In the 18 months since it launched, most people have moved on from the game completely and nothing short of a full-blown Avengers 2.0 relaunch will ever get them to give it a second look. And yet, the impact of Marvel’s Avengers is still being felt across the industry. Not only was it bad for Square Enix’s business, but it also negatively influenced public opinion around the live service model, Marvel, and perhaps even superhero games broadly.

After acquiring Bungie last month, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki told investors that the company aims to launch ten more live service games by March 2026. In any other context, it would be good news that Sony has lots of games in development, but the reaction to Sony’s live service push has not been positive in the slightest. The live service model has become synonymous with microtransactions, massive time sinks, and short lifespans. Despite the overwhelming success of PUBG, GTA Online, Apex Legends, Fortnite, Destiny 2, Warframe, and Rocket League - when a lot of people think of live service, they think of the worst examples: Anthem and Marvel’s Avengers.

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To be fair to Marvel’s Avengers, it isn’t entirely dead yet. In fact, a development update was published just last week that vaguely outlines future plans for the game, including new heroes, a war table rework, and the return of Nick Fury. We can’t even say for sure how much of a failure Marvel’s Avengers really is. There typically isn’t more than 500 people playing on PC, according to Steamdb, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a much bigger (silent) playerbase on