Publishers are retreating from live-service games
Live-service games are updated for years and earn money the whole time, like Fortnite. A hit can pay for a decade, so every big publisher wanted one. Many attempts have failed, and the failures decide which studios close and which games never get made.
What is a live-service game?
A live-service game is not a one-time purchase. It keeps going: the studio keeps adding new content and new things to buy, and money keeps coming in as long as people keep playing. The catch is that the studio has to keep feeding the game for as long as it wants that income.
Where it stands
Sony told investors in 2022 it would have twelve live-service games by March 2026. Reporters count eight canceled or withdrawn, a tally Sony has never confirmed. The pullback is wider than Sony. Warner Bros. wrote off $200 million on Suicide Squad, Ubisoft closed XDefiant along with two studios, and EA switched off Anthem. In 2026 a new shooter called Highguard closed after 45 days, and Amazon announced its exit from online role-playing games. None of these companies says it is leaving live service. Newzoo's 2026 market report found most established hits flat or down in the first half of the year, without giving figures.
Timeline
2022
Sony tells investors it will have twelve live-service games by March 2026
Jim Ryan, then head of PlayStation, tells investors that Sony plans to have twelve live-service games on sale by the end of its 2025 financial year, which runs to March 2026. It had one at the time. Sony called them games with no end.
2023
Sony halves the plan to six
Sony's president Hiroki Totoki tells investors that only six of the twelve will be out by March 2026, and says the quality of the games matters more than the number.
Naughty Dog cancels its online Last of Us game
The studio behind The Last of Us stops work on its online spin-off. Finishing and running it, the studio says, would have meant becoming a studio that only makes live-service games, at the expense of its single-player ones.
2024
Warner Bros. writes off $200 million on Suicide Squad
Warner Bros. Discovery tells investors that its online shooter Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has cost it $200 million in lost value. Its chief executive calls the release disappointing. A further $100 million follows later in the year on MultiVersus, a free online fighting game.
Sony switches off Concord two weeks after launch
Sony takes its new online shooter Concord offline on 6 September 2024, about two weeks after it went on sale, and refunds everyone who bought it.
Ubisoft closes XDefiant and two studios
Ubisoft announces the end of XDefiant, a free online shooter launched seven months earlier, saying it had not been able to attract and retain enough players. It closes its San Francisco and Osaka studios. The servers go off in June 2025.
2025
Sony cancels two more, and the press counts eight of the twelve gone
Sony cancels unannounced live-service games at two more of its studios. Counting by reporters puts seven of the twelve canceled before release, plus Concord, which was released and then withdrawn. Sony never named the twelve, so the count is the press's, not Sony's.
Microsoft cancels an online world seven years in the making
In a round of company-wide layoffs, Microsoft cancels an unannounced online role-playing game at ZeniMax Online Studios, in development since 2018. Microsoft never named the game. Staff confirmed the cancellation on LinkedIn.
Studios stop starting new free-to-play live-service games
Newzoo counts annual free-to-play live-service launches on PC and console falling 31% as an annual average, from 21.3 titles a year in 2020 to 2022 to 14.7 a year in 2023 to 2025, against a peak of 36 titles in 2017 and while releases rose across the wider market. It names rising costs, greater risk and entrenched competitive titles as the causes. The count excludes China, India and mobile.
2026
EA switches off Anthem
EA shuts down the servers of Anthem, its online shooter from 2019, on 12 January 2026. The game cannot be played without them.
A new online shooter closes 45 days after launch
Highguard, a free online shooter, launches on 26 January 2026 and shuts down on 12 March. About two million people tried it. Its developer says it could not build a player base large enough to keep going.
Amazon gets out of online role-playing games
Amazon hands the Western versions of Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark back to their Korean makers, having already ended its Lord of the Rings game. Its own New World will shut down on 31 January 2027. These are MMOs, online games where thousands of players share one world.
Most established live-service games are flat or shrinking
Newzoo's yearly market report finds that live-service games and other long-running hits were flat or down in the first half of 2026 compared with a year earlier. Growth was limited to a few: World of Warcraft, Diablo 4, Overwatch, Roblox and some Tencent releases. The public summary gives no figures.
GamesIndustry.biz, Sophie McEvoy, on Newzoo (10 September 2026)
Consequences
012023
A live-service game crowds out everything else a studio makes
Naughty Dog's own account is the clearest statement of the cost. To ship and then support its online game for years, it says, it would have had to put all its resources there, severely affecting its future single-player games. It chose the single-player games.
022026
The jobs go when the game stops
A live-service game employs a large team for as long as it runs, so ending one ends the jobs. Bungie said it could not keep operating at its previous size once Destiny 2's updates ended, and laid off most of the team. The studio behind Highguard had already cut staff within weeks of launch.
032025
A new game has to take players from an old one
Scott Hartsman, who has run several online games, argues that there are few unclaimed players left. A new live game has to be good enough to take players from another live game, he says, in a field where the top two or three titles hold most of each genre and the typical newcomer earns nothing.
042026
Free-to-play companies are looking at games you pay for once
Marc Merrill, co-founder of Riot Games, which built its business on free games, says there is no rule that every Riot game must be free and that the company is working on some that are not. 'Not every game needs to be infinite,' he says.
Objections
Counterpoint2026
The companies backing out say they are not backing out
Sega's president Shuji Utsumi called its canceled Super Game too risky, and in the same interview said he still sees a business opportunity in live-service games and will keep pursuing it, naming three Sega games. Tencent, China's largest games company, is blunter. 'Our holy grail is live service,' a vice-president told GamesIndustry.biz in September 2026.
Counterpoint2024
Publishers may be quitting too early, not too late
Steve Sinclair, who runs Digital Extremes, the studio behind Warframe, argues the failures come from impatience. A game 'comes out, doesn't work and they throw it away', he says, and publishers 'eject too soon'. Warframe itself took years to find its audience. Newzoo's 2026 figures support him on the demand side: free-to-play's share of playtime on PC and console fell only 2.9 points between 2021 and 2025, to 29.3%, and absolute hours stayed broadly flat, which Newzoo sums up as 'F2P is not dying'.
Counterpoint2025
Nobody counts the closures
No one publishes how many live-service games launch, close or get canceled each year. The best-known figure, eight of Sony's twelve, is a tally by reporters of games Sony never named. The Game Developers Conference survey asked about live-service work in one year only, 2025, when 16% of developers said they were working on one. Newzoo's finding that the old hits are shrinking has reached the public without numbers. The retreat is visible case by case, and nobody has measured it.
Counterpoint2024
Ubisoft closed a live-service game and recommitted in the same post
The announcement that ended XDefiant also says that developing games as a service 'remains a pillar of our strategy'. None of the publishers on this page has said it is leaving live-service games. They are closing individual games.
What to watch
2026
Whether Sony keeps its Horizon game alive
The end of December 2026, the reported deadline for the Horizon Hunters Gathering team to win over Sony's executives with its reworked version.
2027
Amazon's last online world closes
31 January 2027, when Amazon shuts down New World and completes its exit from online role-playing games. Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark carry on under their Korean makers. Whether they keep their Western players is the open question.
Further reading
- ReportingSony will continue to develop live services despite failurespcgamer.com
- DataNewzoo: Most established live-service and evergreen titles were flat or down year over year in H1 2026gamesindustry.biz
- ReportingSega cancelled its "risky" Super Game projectgamesindustry.biz
Where to follow it Game Developer post-mortems, Circana engagement data, publisher earnings calls (Sony, EA, Take-Two)
- Games companies are still cutting jobs
- Rich markets are losing players, and growth has moved elsewhere
- China's growth is going to Chinese-made games
- Investors are pulling money out of studios
- Mobile games are struggling to find new players
- AI data centers are taking the memory games hardware needs
- Game prices are stalling as hardware prices climb
- Games media is consolidating and shrinking