Why are all the games dying? The Thursday Nite Rant

From Apex Legends Mobile to Knockout City, dozens of live service games are being killed off.

^Stay tuned for The Thursday Nite Rant, where is week we’re asking: why are all the games dying?

It seems like the live service bubble has burst, with a huge swathe of online games including shooters, brawlers, and RPGs announcing their cancellation in recent weeks. Some of them representing huge franchises in the space, too: Battlefield Mobile is being sunsetted, along with Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier .

Why is it so hard for live service games to find an audience, even if they’re already attached to a big, beloved property? Well, part of the reason is surely just that the audience has a limited amount of time. Most people don’t have enough free hours in the day to sustain more than one hobby, and so, live service games tend to live or die on how much they can monopolise your life. For a lot of people, Fortnite is their only game. For others, it’s World of Warcraft .

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Fortnite’s popularity is so all-encompassing that even Geralt wants a piece of it.

But there are other factors: sometimes games build enough of a community to keep ticking over, but the shareholder demand for constant growth doesn’t have any truck with the idea that a project might just get big enough and no bigger. In a word, the problem is capitalism (lol).

At the time of recording we knew of the following games being shut down (or in Deathverse’s case, going on temporary hiatus):

Apex Legends Mobile
Babylon’s Fall
Battlefield Mobile
Bravely Default: Brilliant Lights
Crimsight
Crossfire X
Deathverse: Let it Die
Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds
ECHO VR
Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier
Hellfire Tactics
Knockout City
Rumbleverse
Spellbreak
Love Life! School Idol Festival

How many of them were you even aware of? And how many would you even have time to make meaningful progression in? A question that a lot of publishers need to ask themselves is whether or not the pursuit of endless growth is sustainable, because the answer is clearly “no”, and until that’s accepted, their expectations are never going to be realistic.

Not everything can be Fortnite, and that’s not a bad thing!

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Apex Legends Mobile

Android , iOS

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Battlefield Mobile

Android , iOS

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CrossfireX

Xbox One , Xbox Series X/S

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Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier

Video Game

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Fortnite

Android , iOS , PS4 , PS5 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X/S , PC , Mac , Nintendo Switch

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Knockout City

PS4 , PS5 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X/S , PC , Nintendo Switch

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Rumbleverse

Video Game

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Spellbreak

PS4 , Xbox One , PC , Nintendo Switch

Wishlisted - Our 10 Best Steam Next Fest Demos

Another Next Fest kicks off soon, but we’ve already done the digging for you.

Welcome to Wishlisted, a showcase of our favourite demos from Steam Next Fest: June 2024. Check the video above or watch on YouTube .

Finding the Best NextFest Demos is all about the joy of discovery, but with so many Steam Next Fest demos getting released in such a short amount of time, it can be bewildering. So we’ve decided to show you our ten Best Steam Next Fest games which we think deserve your attention. These are all upcoming Steam Next Fest games that we’re genuinely excited for, and that we think should play nicely on PC handhelds too!

This is just the start of our Next Fest coverage. This week we’ll be previewing loads of upcoming demos across the entire network - right here on VG247, of course, but also over on our sister sites Eurogamer and Rock Paper Shotgun. Bookmark our Wishlisted Steam Fest hub to stay in the loop. And this is well before Next Fest actually starts, so you, dear reader, get to bask for a solid fortnight celebrating all the wonderful new games that are just around the corner. Enjoy!