My Confession

When Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League first dropped, I was hooked. I poured countless hours into it, scouring every corner for Riddler secrets and savoring the gameplay. But as time went on, something shifted. The cracks in the live service model began to show, leaving me drained and questioning why these games feel so inherently flawed.

Live Service Fatigue

Let’s face it, when you play a live service game, you're bombarded with content. Bi-weekly updates, endless events, and a constant flow of challenges—it’s all designed to keep you hooked. But when a game demands your attention 24/7, you start to wonder: what’s the real cost of this as a player?

Daily challenges and limited-time events dangle rewards just out of reach, creating a cycle of FOMO (fear of missing out), and to be completely honest here, it’s exhausting. Like sure, it keeps the game alive, but at the expense of your free time, mental energy, and more likely than not your wallet. With all these expenses you pay without realizing it you slowly get to a point where the fun starts to feel more like a chore.

Take Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 for example. The recent Squid Game collaboration is a flashy and exciting gaming event on the surface, and hell, I loved playing the red light green light mode and watching people argue with each other over the smallest things, but if you want to collect every cosmetic because of it being a franchise you enjoy or just because you're worried it won't come back in the future, you'll have to fish up over $80, which includes shop bundles and an event pass that requires a few hours of playtime to complete, meaning you're not only spending money on cosmetics, but you're also spending money on earning a few extra rewards if you play within a specific timeframe.

It’s not just Call of Duty

Let’s talk about Fortnite, the game that is slowly starting to be known more and more for the collaborations inside of it instead of the gameplay itself. Every week, there’s something new: Marvel, Star Wars, Anime, Musicians, Movies, Nike Shoes—you name it. It’s like a never-ending pop culture buffet where every update brings like 5 new collaborations to the game. Now I will admit that yeah, it's amazing and hilarious to see Goku, Eminem, Hatsune Miku, and a banana version of Wolverine called "Peelverine" teaming up together, but when every single update adds new limited time collaborations, new challenges for the games ever-growing collection of new modes, and more reasons to try forcing your hand into logging in every. single. day., it starts to feel like a treadmill you can’t get off.

Sometimes I feel like I hate too much on Fortnite, it's a solid game with tons of different experiences for you to enjoy, but I can't help but feel that if I take a break to play a different game that i'll end up falling behind or missing out on content, which hits harder when you've invested countless hours (and money) into the game. I just feel like I get bombarded with a billion different limited-time offers or battle passes demanding me to play and "level up" every single day to get cosmetics.

Not Every Live Service Game is Bad

Now I know it might sound like i'm just a grumpy old man yelling at clouds but to be fair, not every live service game that exists is a nightmare. There are some games that strike a balance between trying to keep you coming back for more and making sure you don't feel like you're stuck on an endless hamster wheel.

As much as I hate to say it because it has sucked so much time away from me, good examples of live service games in my opinion would have to be Destiny 2 and Final Fantasy XIV Online for varying different reasons.

Destiny 2 has an amazing storytelling aspect built inside of a live service game that makes you sometimes wonder how you can get the type of story you'd get in a singleplayer story-driven game in a live service title. Now I will admit that this game does have some issues such as the fact that some content such as Fishing (which was removed from the game a few seasons later) is locked behind a paywall requiring you to buy the season pass. I do believe they've started to dwindle down the efforts of paywalling content but it does suck that they do have some messed up methods here and there.

The seasonal activities and rewards in Destiny 2 feel like they enhance the experience rather than just being another box to check off. I do know some people go for weapon "god rolls" and you can end up in a deep spiraling grind if you are attempting to buildcraft an overpowered loadout for each activity, but without focusing on it you can still have fun and not feel like you're missing much if you take a break.

Final Fantasy XIV Online on the other hand is a completely different behemoth. It uses an outdated monthly subscription membership in order to play it, but it is constantly getting updates and has existed since 2013, which is a LONG time to be alive as a game which has a focus on constantly adding new content. While the game does have limited-time events every so often such as Mountain Dew or Fall Guys collaborations, it doesn't bombard you with so much content that you feel forced to login regularly for hours upon hours each day. I've taken multi-month long breaks from this game before and came back without feeling like I missed out on much, which is a great feeling as it feels like the game respects my time and allows me to enjoy this live service MMORPG landscape at my own pace.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, live service games are a double-edged sword of good and bad. On one hand you get the alluring blue pill filled with infinite content, exciting collaborations, and an "always evolving" game, but on the other hand you get the red pill which consists of daily challenges, limited time events, FOMO, cosmetics with exclusive variants based on when you obtained it or how you obtained it, and a relentless push for you to give up your attention and wallet, leaving some players feeling drained instead of pleased with the experience they had.

I absolutely love games and I want to keep loving them, but I think I need to take more of a step back away from the games built around $20 DLC's arriving every single other day chocked full of daily quests, weekly quests, event quests, and more battlepasses than I can count.