A tale of two live service games: Helldivers 2 tanks as Palworld flies

The reason it’s a bad idea is that while making a high-quality, big-budget single-player hit is something most publishers can do with a fair degree of credibility (eg .Sony’s latest Stellar Blade, which was also a new IP and created by a previously unknown developer), the live service games are much more unpredictable. Not only that, but even if they do well at first, that’s no guarantee they’ll still be popular a few months down the line.

Palworld and Helldivers 2 were among the first releases of the year and were early hits, as if heralding a new era of live-action dominance. And yet a few weeks ago both were struggling to stay in the top 40 most played games on Steam.

Helldivers 2 may be the best-selling PlayStation console exclusive of all time, but the majority of players are on PC – which is expected to affect Sony’s future policy on simultaneous releases and PC support in general.

However, the game never recovered from the completely unnecessary debacle involving the forced use of PlayStation Network accounts and has been on the back foot ever since.

The number of players on Steam over the weekend (it’s not possible to get exact console numbers) was less than a tenth of its peak closer to launch, when 458,709 people were playing at once.

Although the PSN issue was an unforced error, the other problem has been the lack of significant new content in recent weeks, with developer Arrowhead previously stating that they are trying to ensure that updates are of a higher quality, even if this means they come out less. often.

The problem is that there hasn’t been much to get excited about in recent months, and while Palworld has performed similarly poorly of late, fans have had the promise of the *Sakurajima* update to look forward to, which came out on Friday and immediately saw the number of Steam players increase by 700%.

The update adds a new area and PvP gameplay, and as a result, the number of concurrent players on Steam increased from around 15,000 back in June to 143,369 at the weekend. That’s still well short of the record 2,101,867 launches, which is among the highest ever recorded on Steam, but it has pushed the game back into the top 20.

Whether it stays there, or goes even higher, probably depends on how well the PvP features are affected, but Pocketpair’s developer is quite small and never expected this success, and thus had relatively few plans to capitalize on it.

Sony has less excuses for its handling of Helldivers 2, but both games make it clear that initial success is no indicator of a game’s long-term future.

There’s no sign that the uneven fortunes of the two games will stop the companies from trying again, as many see the chance to produce another Fortnite as worth putting up with a few failures – or just less successful – over the years. on the way.

It was impossible to tell how big Palworld and Helldivers 2 would be when they launched, and it’s just as impossible to say now. You probably won’t be able to tell for sure until next year.

The video game industry has always been driven by hits, but live service titles take that model to the extreme, and it’s unfortunate that it’s adding an extra layer of volatility to an industry that has yet to fully recover from a pandemic or crisis. of the cost of living.