What does a wave of closures mean for live service games?
The past month has seen a slew of developers and publishers announce their live service titles will be shutting down this year, some of which aren't even a year old.
Within the space of a week, it was announced that the plug would be pulled on Apex Legends Mobile, Rumbleverse, Knockout City, CrossfireX, Crayta and Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero's Bonds.
As our managing editor Brendan Sinclair observed in our latest 10 Years Ago this month, this is far from the first time a wave of similar titles have been scrapped, and that it's a drop in the ocean compared to the number of live service games still running.
But for those still concerned this might represent that start of a trend, Midia Research senior analyst Karol Severin says he believes it is more a case of the market – and companies operating in it – finding "a new, more sustainable supply/demand equilibrium."
"It's similar to how we've seen lots of companies doing layoffs in the last couple of months – companies' hiring policies were, until a few months ago, largely set up for revenue growth in a bullish market," he tells GamesIndustry.biz.
"Now that the macroeconomic conditions are more adverse, there is more effort to cut expenditure and drive towards profitability, as debt and cash is more expensive due to high interest rates and inflation.
"This also means that there is less appetite for riskier projects. During the more favourable market conditions, some companies overinvested into their live ops journeys – possibly seduced or encouraged by stellar growth in the Covid years. I would argue that these pullbacks are a fairly organic adjustment, given the change in macroeconomic trends, rather than painting a picture about the live services sector
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