After the resounding success of our first non-definitive top 5 list (i.e. it wasn’t criticized in the comments, which is a colossal success on the internet), we’re back with our second weekly installment. Live services love nothing more than milking the depleted teats of gamer wallets dry, so with that same energy, we’re here to pull even more from the well of terrible industry practices. Would it surprise you to learn that it was a mission to pick just 5? I thought so.

Unfortunately, for this rodeo, we’re not showing off with the impeccably selected top five live service games, but instead laughing Nelson-style at those who failed before they even got rolling. Again, you should definitely take this with no scruples and the utmost seriousness. Since corporate CEOs love to laugh at us on the way to the bank, we should use this moment to laugh back derisively.

5. Battleborn

Ah, Battleborn. We barely knew you. It was released in 2016 with the promise of overthrowing and destroying all other hero shooters, but ironically was brutally murdered by a hero shooter in its early days. Believe it or not, Overwatch was once a gaming phenomenon, although you might find that hard to comprehend in 2024.

Anyway, Battleborn was released with an incredible 25 heroes to choose from and play with. I am sure that this enormous variety cannot be compared to any inherent problems. So, I don’t know, are they all terribly boring, homogenous and lacking in creativity? No, certainly not. Players obviously loved it, considering it went free-to-play in 2017. No guilt if you paid for it at release, right?

Salt meets wound: Battleborn was taken off sale in 2019 and finally came to an end in January 2021. I think the biggest shock for this title was that it even survived for more than a year. First Alien: Colonial Marines and then Battleborn? Gearbox Software really gave us their best there.

4. Predator: Hunting Grounds

Predator: Hunting Grounds, the only title on this list that’s actually still alive, has done reasonably well. But for a game based on one of science fiction’s most honorable hunter species, the Predators became an insect in a battle factory. A fairly solid early launch brought in plenty of players in 2020, though the COVID-19 lockdown may have boosted those numbers a little.

If the best your game can do is sit around staring at a wall in your free time when you can’t leave the house, that’s not a high bar to clear. Then again, it had to compete with Tiger King and Inside, all sorts of things. Since then, it’s averaged around 200 concurrent players on Steam, hardly numbers to show off as trophies in your interplanetary, stealth-equipped spaceship.

Predator: Hunting Grounds never really stood a chance since we already had Alien vs Predator: Extinction. It was doomed from the start, like a Carl Weathers in Predator.

3. Marvel’s Avengers

I know a sensible decision when I see it. A development team known for cinematic, story-driven single-player adventures? LET’S MAKE THEM PRODUCE A LIVE SERVICE, BABY! I assume that’s how the company meeting went, it just makes sense in my head. As nonsensical as it may sound here, that’s exactly what happened, mysteriously.

Marvel’s Avengers launched in September 2020 (crazily, it feels like it came out decades ago? Surely that has nothing to do with the way it looks and plays) and survived for about as long as Spiderman did after the Thanos snap. In reality, that was three years. During that time, the game was plagued with controversy ranging from boring gameplay, recycled content, platform-specific characters in a multiplatform game, and the eventual sale of Crystal Dynamics to Embracer Group. We all know how well That is gone…

Good choice, Square Enix. You can put Marvel’s Avengers right at the top of the live service gaming apex with… Chocobo GP? Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier? Babylon’s Fall? Man, I could make a whole list of just Square IPs.

2. Lawbreakers

The game was called “too woke” and labeled a failure by Cliffy B (Cliff Bleszinski), aka Dude Huge… apparently. To be honest, Cliffy had quite a bit to say during LawBreakers’ run. He told the press to fuck off (spoiler alert, the F is not for fudge), claimed he would never make another game, and saw half of his team leave the studio. Nothing but sunshine and rainbows if you turn a blind eye to reality.

It’s a shame, because LawBreakers was actually a pretty solid live service shooter. I mean, sure, you could argue that it barely lasted 13 months. You could say that it had to be free-to-play for the last four months. You could even argue that it caused the entire studio to close. There would be a but here, but there isn’t. All of those things are true. Cliffy B, however, had one cartridge left in the can and produced Radical Heights in just five months. FIVE!

I’m sure that was much more successful than LawBreakers, right? Right?

1. Hymn

EA’s Patrick Söderlund once stated that Anthem had been on a ten-year journey since its release. Well, it’s now been five years since its 2019 release date, and the journey seems to be ground level and six feet underground. Another example of fantastic management strategy, putting RPG veterans BioWare on a third-person action shooter that has spent more time dressing up as Iron Man than actually creating interesting content to play.

Combine that with a disastrously confusing, spreadsheet-like poster with dozens and dozens of versions, accusations of filler content, and a result that is absolutely not in keeping with the wonderful E3 2017 trailer, and you have an absolute dumpster fire cocktail. Delicious. Oddly enough, Anthem 2.0 was supposed to come out any day now, I wonder what happened to that? It can’t have been cancelled… or could it?

Anthem is at the top simply because it’s so weird that it barely made it through any of its supposed 10 years. We should only be halfway through its “journey” – if that’s even possible.

I would promise not to continually bleed live services dry, but since the companies that produce them so happily have no qualms about milking a dead cow, I won’t promise not to either. But that’s it for this week. Have we missed any other popular live services that died before they were even conceived? I’m sure there are at least thirty more lurking in the shadows. Again, if you disagree, feel free to get angry in the comments and curse me to all kinds of hell or scream at the wall, both work. Finally, once again, this post is nothing but concrete truths.

Until next week!

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