Examples of Damage Control in Gaming: The Week for Announcing Live Service Game Reboots

Live service titles, otherwise known as “Games as a Service,” are games updated frequently over time by their developers and publishers. It’s never surprising when their production teams announce and release new content for them. Publishers have sworn by them for this console generation thanks to how players continue to come back to them over time to check out new content after the initial usually-$60 (or an equivalent in different regions) investment. If the games are good, those players will even pay for new content and expansions provided the updates are satisfyingly robust.

Since so many publishers are relying on them as their main moneymakers, there are entirely too many of them on the market these days. High-profile titles are underperforming due to stiff competition and fatigue, though poor management in either the development studio or with subsequent content releases (or both) isn’t helping. Two of the biggest examples of this are Anthem from the developer and publisher combo Bioware and EA, and Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 from Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft. Coincidentally, the teams for both games announced within 24 hours of each other that they’ll receive significant updates in the future. One of them, in fact, is essentially a reboot.

It was evident shortly before it released that Anthem would be a critical disappointment. Early access players criticized it for lacking enough content to keep the player base interested in sticking with the game. The quality of its missions themselves was also unsatisfying, with some requiring tedious grinding to complete — the absolute worst kind of padding. And that’s not even getting into the hell the development team went through in assembling the project. Despite appearing in sales charts for months and being among the top 20 best-selling games of the year in North America (it’s #15), EA still called it a disappointment. They wanted this game to be a phenomenon, but it was merely a good seller.

Faced with this predicament, Bioware and EA had the choice to either reboot it or kill it, the latter being the more common decision for underperforming online games. But give them a hand for taking the riskier route, as the team confirmed through the Anthem blog that all updates are being halted due to their plan to completely redesign the game. The team will be “focusing on a longer-term redesign of the experience, specifically working to reinvent the core gameplay loop with clear goals, motivating challenges and progression with meaningful rewards.” No release timeframe was given for when it could arrive, outside the mention of how it will take months; but they’ll be deep at work on it.

This announcement wasn’t too big of a surprise. Kotaku’s always-knowledgeable Jason Schreier reported that this reinvention was coming in mid-November, according to three sources who were clearly legitimate. Exactly how it would be distributed wasn’t clear then, nor is it clear now. But it was enough to confirm that speculation regarding Anthem’s death was premature. There’s a good chance the overworked team at Bioware put so many resources into the game over several years that they can’t afford to kill it so soon.

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 didn’t do as badly for Ubisoft as Anthem did for EA. It actually charted higher than that game on the list of best-selling games of 2019, at #7, and its reception among critics and players was better than Bioware’s title. Yet, Ubisoft nonetheless confirmed during an earnings call that the game sold below expectations, implying how they wanted this to be a phenomenon that towered over the first Division installment. Early reception was good, sure, but players became dissatisfied over the slow trickle of updates and new content, a problem they still haven’t rectified.

Turns out, there was a good reason for that, at least in the last few months: They were working on the Warlords of New York expansion. As the name implies, this will move the story back to its predecessor’s downtown Manhattan setting, albeit not draped in snow. Wall Street and Chinatown will be among the districts that can be explored, in the search for one of the first game’s key antagonists. This should attract anyone who enjoyed the predecessor’s setting far more than Washington DC in the second game. The expansion will be part of an overhaul that will transform this game into one with seasonal updates, and the endgame content in the main quest will be reconfigured with new tasks and global events. This isn’t as big a deal as Bioware/EA with Anthem, but it’s still a bigger deal than what most live service games receive.

The Warlords of New York expansion is coming on March 3rd, a mere three weeks from today. The standalone price will be $29.99, but it will be available bundled with the base game for $39.99. The good price will be another way in which Ubisoft hopes to lure more fans, and welcome back others who might have sold their copies.

Reboots of online games aren’t common. Publishers are more likely to put a game out of its misery than spend the money and development resources required to resuscitate it. But two recent projects have shown how successful revivals can be. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn was Square Enix’s grand effort to make a worthwhile project out of the critical and commercial failure that was the original MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, which has since been an overwhelming success for them. No Man’s Sky NEXT actually delivered on the promise the original No Man’s Sky presented, and was successful enough for the game to reenter global sales charts.

EA and Ubisoft are hoping the revamps of Anthem and The Division 2 will be as successful as the above examples. But even though both companies have massive resources, I can’t understate how tough it will be to recreate the experiences both provided with the original assets that can overcome their early receptions — especially for Anthem. Good luck, because they’ll need it.