Premium Live-Service Games Are Failing, But Diablo 4 Is Bucking The Trend

The Winter Of Premium Live-Service Games Is Coming

Premium live-service games are in the midst of a winter in the industry, where even though the industry consumes the time of millions of players, few new games are popular and server shutdowns are becoming more frequent. To keep players on their servers, series like Destiny and Overwatch have turned to free-to-play.

And premium live-service games, which are paid games with long-term profit projects, are gradually withdrawing from the market and are on the verge of extinction.

In 2024, developers and players are still fresh in their minds when they recall two major failures of premium live-service games. Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League cost WB Games nearly $200 million in investment. And another more expensive game, Concord, launched by Sony, couldn’t even get players interested in the game. In just a few weeks, the game disappeared.

Although Sony also has a popular game Helldivers 2, it is obvious that Helldivers 2 is not a game that the developer has worked hard to market, and the developer did not even consider it would be successful. And the final result also surprised the developers.

The Success Of Diablo 4 Is Because Of Its Game Type

Faced with such a difficult Premium live-service game, the developer of Diablo 4 rose to the challenge. Once launched in 2023, it won the love of many players and brought huge sales to the developer. Even in 2024, the game still has many fanatical fans, demonstrating a strong growth momentum.

So, how did Diablo 4 rise to the challenge and stand out from the decline of Premium live-service games?

For Rod Fergusson, the producer of famed Gears of War and now the general manager of the Diablo series, the most critical reason is that the developer did not consider the type of game when making the game. At the beginning of the game, the game studio only intended to make a game called Diablo.

But after the game was completed, the players in the game needed to continuously complete tasks, experience the game plot, kill enemies and get Diablo 4 Gold, which ultimately determined that it was an online service game rather than other types of games.

“An ARPG is inherently a live service. The question is what you do about it.” Rod Fergusson once said this to reporters in an interview. Rod Fergusson said that at the beginning of the production, the game production team had discussed whether Diablo 4 was a live service game, or whether the development team simply called it a live service game.

In the end, they found the right answer, recalling the expectations of millions of players in each season of Diablo 3. No matter how it is characterized, ARPG is essentially a live service game, and the most critical content is what efforts the developers have made for this.

For Fergusson, live service is an opportunity to constantly self-examine and self-update and repair the game, but the premise is to enable players to generate motivation to continue playing in the game. When players play Diablo 4 or a game similar to Diablo 4, they want to experience the entire game campaign. And after that, players hope to continue fighting, get Diablo 4 Items and other rewards dropped in the victorious battle, and reap the joy of winning the game and the rewards. In such an endless fantasy, players will return to the game again and again. This feedback will inspire game developers, allowing them to continuously provide new ideas for the game and generate new game content.

“That was one of the things that was great.” Fergusson believes that he believes they will not stop here, they will continue to improve the game and strive to create new game content for all players.

Game Developers Should Be Inspired By This

When making a game, game developers should not copy and paste, but consider the game content and choose the right game type. Just like when Suicide Squad promoted the experience content, players said after the experience that the content of the game was not suitable for online service games, and they could not be naturally integrated together.

Although the genre chosen by Concord is correct, it seems to be made by game developers to cater to the needs of live service games, which goes against the purpose of game production, players’ demand for Overwatch alternatives.

On the other hand, D4’s success is because players need a new game similar to the Diablo series. Players want new games that can be played for a long time, which also caters to the classic line of Field of Dreams “It’s not that if you build it, they will come, but because they will come, so we better build it.”

It can be seen that listening to the voice of players and choosing the correct game genre to match the game content is particularly important for the success of a game. Developers should be good at listening to players’ opinions, thinking, and constantly modifying games to achieve success.