Live service isn’t gaming’s holy grail — and Bungie just proved why
If there’s one sign we can take from the unprecedented number of layoffs across the games industry these past two years, it’s that we’re in the midst of an identity crisis. The industry isn’t in any danger of crashing, but publishers and studios are now being forced to adapt to the new market in ways they may never have had to before. The two major strategies seem to be falling back to the safety of established IP, and rolling the dice in the hopes of launching a successful live-service game. The latter has been attempted by just about every big player in the space, from EA to Xbox, but very few have managed to siphon off a big enough audience from the established titles to last any meaningful length of time.
