I’m really frustrated with how almost every new game these days is being forced into this “live service” model. It seems like no matter what type of game you want to play—whether it’s an RPG, shooter, or even something traditionally single-player—you’re stuck with always-online requirements. And for what? It adds nothing to the experience for most players and, if anything, it makes the game worse.
Take Fallout 76, for example. You can’t play it offline, period. You’re expected to pay $100 a year for a subscription to play by yourself, but even then, you’re still online, and any slight hiccup in your internet connection—or their terrible servers—means you get kicked off. It’s absurd. Fallout has always been a solo game experience, but now we’re locked into an online system no one wanted. Who actually benefits from this? Not the players, that’s for sure.
Another perfect example is Once Human. This is a game that could have been incredible, but instead, it’s trapped in the live service model from the start. I’m sitting there playing, and there’s no one around. So why am I online? Why can’t I just enjoy the game offline? It’s not like I’m asking to avoid multiplayer altogether—just give players the option! If I want to jump into a server and play with others, fine. But the fact that I’m forced to connect even for big chunks of the game that should be playable offline just feels unnecessary.
One of the worst offenders in recent memory is Temtem. It’s like they tried to make a multiplayer Pokémon and failed miserably. The game is fully online, yet it’s a ghost town. Steam shows fewer than 100 players on at any given time, but they still force everyone to play online. And one day, the servers will go offline entirely, and what happens to your game then? It’s completely gone, and so is your money. It feels like a scam.
The worst part is, nobody seems to be fighting against this trend except for the EU. They’re already working on passing laws that would require games to be playable offline if the servers get shut down. Imagine that! A game company actually having to care about whether you can play the game you paid for after it’s abandoned. It’s crazy to me that this isn’t already standard everywhere. The fact that we even need a law to ensure you can still enjoy your purchase after the servers are gone is telling.
It’s just sad to see so many great games ruined by forced online connectivity. Live service works for some titles, but not everything needs to be connected 24/7. Developers need to wake up and realize that players want the choice, not a one-size-fits-all approach that makes everything worse in the long run.
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You can support games like Inquisitor martyr that shut the servers down, but patched the game first to allow you to pick any season to play offline.
I am fighting this trend by not buying those games. Online connection for single player means I don’t buy it. Unnecessary third-party account means I don’t buy it. Packing a rootkit installer means I don’t buy it.
Plenty of new popular singleplayer releases: https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/2024/?min_price=0.01&min_rating=85&displayOnly=Game&category=2&sort=followers_desc
Edit:
If you want less popular games take these (collected from YouTube, !tycoon@lemmy.world , steam etc):
Plucky Squire - 2d+3d platformer
Wild Bastards - roguelike strategy fps
Arco - turn based rpg
Nova Drift - bullet hell roguelike
Scorchlands - city builder
Linkito - puzzle game
SCHİM - casual platformer
Bō - 2d platformer metroidvania
TerraScape - puzzle city builder
Gestalt - retro rpg metroidvania
GHOSTWARE - boomer shooter
Selaco - boomer shooter
Nine Sols - metroidvania
Reus 2 - God game
The Rogue Prince of Persia - roguelite
Galacticare - hospital tycoon
Synergy - puzzle god game
Paper Trail - puzzle
MULLET MADJACK - boomer shooter
Gatekeeper - roguelike
Ingression - 2d portal platformer
ZAU - metroidvania
Laysaria - city builder
Children of the Sun - puzzle sniper
Pepper Grinder - 2d platformer with dragon hills like mechanic
Death of a Wish - 2d spectacle fighter
Thaumaturge - rpg
Penny’s Big Breakaway - 3d platformer
Please, Touch The Artwork 2 - casual
20 Small Mazes - casual puzzle
Islands of Insight - mmo puzzle (can offline)
Banishers - rpg
Oblivion Override - rougelike
Anomaly Agent - roguelike
New Cycle - city builderIf you want AAA/AA games from previous years, I can recommend:
Hellblade 1 - action adventure
Sleeping Dogs - gtalike
Chorus - space dogfighterAlso check out !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works , someone posts nice old games every other day there
Best comment so far wow. Didn’t even know this was a thing
Check the edit :)
Almost every game is a indie game at this time, stop looking for big capital games
Itch.io has some great games. Steam has an entire section. Totally agree with you.
I just got Good Boy Galaxy. Awesome game.
Almost every game is a indie game at this time, stop looking for big capital games
Steam and Epic Games Store make it very hard to find new indie games to play. Almost everything on my store page is AAA or liveservice trash. If you browse by ‘new and trending’, it’s also mostly low effort asset flips. There are games that have mostly negative reviews where it literally even says “They just took an asset pack demo and listed it for sale” and there’s like 15 pages of this per month. How do you find a good game?
Lemmy, friends, YouTube, websearch.
Steam is literally constantly doing showcase events for different genres of small games.
Literally on the front page right now there’s a turn-based RPG showcase. OP seems wilfully ignorant.
Almost everything on my store page is AAA or liveservice trash.
Very little on my Steam page is. This is just one data point but still it suggests their suggestion algorithm somewhat works for this.
Just an observation on that specific thing not a disagreement with the problem. Live service is trash and needs to go away if it’s not an exclusively multiplayer game.
That’s not my experience with steam at all. Only one or two options of the steam store tend to show AAA games over indie games. If you browse by category or using the dynamic recommendation you’ll see plenty of good games.
Look at what pirate repackers like fitgirl and dodi are putting out. They have a much lower throughput and often focus on popular indie or small studio titles.
I’m pretty dialed into indie games. What kind of games do you like? I might be able to recommend some. I get most of my indie recommendations through word of mouth or curators.
The steam store page has an algorithm tuned to your preferences. If you’ve already been playing a lot of live service games, then it assumes you must like them. Once you start showing an interest in other games, you can probably just cruise through your discovery queue.
To skip the algorithm, you can try looking at the steam store web page in a private / incognito window. But if most of the money makers are live service or free-to-play then that may just be the default offering.
I think this may be algorithmic. Like steam gives suggestions based on what you have already purchased, and what other people who purchased the same games also like. Additionally it’ll tell you what your friends are playing if you friend them on steam. This sort of gives everyone a different picture of steam suggestions that is tailored to them. It might be a good idea to find older non-live service games you like, add them to a new profile or wishlist, and then see what new information pops up for you.
It is algorithmic, for sure. I’ve played so many live games… TF2, Overwatch, Dota, etc. Now it thinks it’s all that I want lmao
It’s mostly just finding some reviews/word of mouth sources that you trust and which align with your tastes.
On the review side of things Second Wind covers a decent spread of indie games. I also occasionally see some new stuff from streamers, but that’s more of a toss up since there’s a lot of sponsored coverage.
There are dozens of other very good games for every one live service. Find some you like and play them.
I vote with my wallet. I don’t buy games that have scummy conditions or requirements. There are too many other choices out there to justify supporting companies who treat their customers poorly.
I’m confused. Are you running out of games to play? Do you only play on console or something?
No, I play on PC. It’s just tough to find new games for me. I use reddit’s gaming suggestions sub, sometimes they’re good. That’s how I first discovered things like Wasteland 2/3, and Deep Rock. But now, it’s challenging to find new games to play… people just play the same things or recommend “the hits” repeatedly. Can’t tell you how many times I have seen the same games recommended on Steam. I’ve started ignoring them now entirely. Idk how to find new games now :\
Google search for good games and read through various results and see if there’s something you haven’t seen. Or in Steam customize your search for what you’re looking for and crawl through the options. If you get off the front page of Steam the entire catalog is available to filter and search.
Planned obsolescence hidden behind a “feature”.
In ten years, when they want to pull the plug on this game, they will cite dwindling users and “exorbitant” per-user maintenance costs.
They don’t want playable legacies. They want something they can leverage for nostalgia marketing in 20 years, and if you break out the original game, they won’t make any money. Production companies want you to buy what they are offering today, because it pays for new yachts.
In ten years? If I had to guess the average life span of live services games I’d say about 18 months. Heavily skewed by the survivors. The shortest lived one only worked for 13 days. Only the very popular ones survive past 5 years and there are a handful of 10 plus. I know it’s hard to believe, the average gamer is oblivious to how over saturated the videogames market is. Despite executive’s delusions, time and money are actually finite. Not all games can demand all of it, at the same time.
In ten years, when they want to pull the plug on this game, they will cite dwindling users and “exorbitant” per-user maintenance costs.
TemTem has been accused of exactly this. It’s nonsensical how they won’t allow people who bought the game to play offline. Here’s an example from 7 months ago on reddit where someone said: “they’ve literally said that they will keep TemTem playable one way or another, including if they need to make an offline mode”. The game has under 1k players now according to Steamcharts, about 700 today. It launched with 27k players. It’s virtually unplayable since it’s designed as an MMO fully online, but has barely anyone playing it. But they STILL refuse to develop an offline mode.
We’re all sick of live service games, and that’s why new (copycat) games are failing so hard. Look at XDefinant, Concord, etc.
Plenty of people have one or two live service games that they like/play, and the sustained success of those titles like Fortnite, Destiny, Apex Legends, Diablo IV is why we keep seeing so many clones and attempts to hit the next gold vein. But the creators of those copycat titles fail to capture the real source of others’ success; great gameplay.
Live service justifies microtransactions.
https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1156&context=ccerp
Wow, just read that… It’s so true. Look at games like Hoyo’s Honkai, Genshin, Zenless… So much gambling. It’s obscene…
I haven’t played a live service game since Destiny 2 decided to completely remove all the shit I paid for, then lock everything new behind even more pay walls.
I’ve been playing dozens of games since then. It’s not hard to find games that aren’t live service and likely won’t be touched outside of stability and a couple QoL things here and there.
I’m all for laws requiring all games to be playable offline, and without any sort of bullshit “online activation”. I paid for a game, I want to play the game without having to download shit first. I want to play the game whether my hanky-ass internet connection is stable or even nonexistent today. I want to be able to use the thing I paid for without having to jump through extra hoops, no matter how large or “on the ground” the hoop is. It’s still a hoop.
I left the pc gaming scene about 20 years ago and only came bacj this year. I found my steam credentials from when they were initially seeking players and revived my account (I closed my email on the account back in 2009, so i couldn’t recover).
I’ve mostly been playing vSkyrim, BG 3, and a few emulated Zelda games. I finally ordered a new gaming laptop because Cyberpunk 2077 is hard to rrad on the Deck, even on a 50" tv on hi-res.
All that is just so you all know where I’m coming from, i am both a newb and a veteran!
From a business standpoint, looking ant it form the non-gaming financial point of view, the move to online-only makes very compelling sense.
It fully implements the licensing model, gives them total control over the property, enables them to generate reports that accurately identify trndsvin user populations, pinpoint steady revenue figures, and they can kill the game as soon as it isn’t valuable to them anymore, and they don’t have to worry about losing revenue from sharing, passing the copy to an otherwise paying customer for free, or a significant pirtiin of piracy loss.
Itvis the end state of the “we are mearly licensing it to you until such time as we decide ee want it back” model.
It sucks, and if i can know it is online only before buying, i will pass. All of us should. Revenue is king to them, and if they lose even a little, they will try something else.
I wish they would stop releasing updates and DLC for Stellaris, so the modders have a version they can tinker with.
I love Stellaris, so can relate :'(
It’s easy to avoid the worst offenders. Also “live service” is a very broad term and covers a lot.
One aspect that I really don’t like is when games just seem to hang on too long with updates and/or DLC. Be proud to finish the game and move on to something new (looking at you The Long Dark…)
