They can’t lay people off, so they just put them in a room with no work to do until they get so bored that they quit. It’s the same thing but different.
Live service, sure, since that’s the entire point of live service, but we’re spoiled for choice of fantastic games across different scopes and scales that don’t have any microtransactions at all.
As an alternate perspective, early access isn’t some sad, new state of gaming. Done right, it’s a way to hone in on perfecting a systems-driven game that probably doesn’t really have an end. It’s been used to great effect in roguelikes, Kerbal Space Program, and Baldur’s Gate 3. If anything, the problem with the program now is that there are so many finished games to choose from that it’s a harder sell to try out an early access game.
Right, but that extra launcher causes problems, so I tend to avoid games that still have it. It’s why I still haven’t played A Way Out but played Split Fiction.
FF7 remake is cool for a lot of reasons, but we’ve got countless reasons to support the idea that turn-based combat isn’t the barrier to playing those old games.
Not to be too much of a bummer, but the gaming industry seemingly grew too fast, and the end result is going to be that there just aren’t as many jobs in the industry to be filled by any team once the layoffs are done. Maybe a handful of the people laid off here go on to work together again.
The decline of a live service game is so inevitable that it seems silly to me to ascribe a reason to it. Eventually, people just want something newer than regular content updates can provide.