Unveiling the Ultimate Fate of Live-Service Games: Caldera and Beyond

Activision has announced that Call of Duty: Warzone will be shutting down later this year after three eventful years. The studio aims to shift players towards new experiences like Warzone 2 and will be directing all their focus on that title. By September 21, active players will lose all their earned progress and will need to explore other battle royale games. This marks the end of a popular game, but it's a phenomenon that fans of live-service games will likely have to get used to as time passes.

Call of Duty: Warzone is the latest addition to a growing list of live-service games that will eventually come to an end. With the gaming industry fully embracing this concept, numerous titles will have a predetermined closure. The flow of money will cease, players will move on, and studios will redirect their attention elsewhere. Though it would be ideal for games to last indefinitely, the closure of Warzone serves as a clear indication of what lies ahead.

Live-Service Closures Will Become More Prevalent

Live-service games rely on player engagement and spending. These online games are dependent on an online space, which can be shut down abruptly, resulting in the loss of all player progress and purchases. Ultimately, players do not truly own what they earn, and the game studio determines the lifespan of their purchases. This is the current reality of the gaming industry, and as more studios invest in live-service games, this phenomenon will become even more prevalent.

First-person shooter (FPS) games like Call of Duty have traditionally had a finite lifespan due to the eventual discontinuation of online servers. However, these games have managed to stay alive thanks to offline elements. Although some older titles still have active online servers, the number of daily players is significantly low. In contrast, live-service games like Call of Duty: Warzone lack offline features and cannot be sustained by smaller player communities. Therefore, once these games cease to generate revenue, they will disappear entirely.

The MMORPG community and similar groups have long dealt with this issue. When an MMO's playerbase diminishes, the game ultimately shuts down. Over the years, numerous classic MMOs have been lost to time, and it appears that more and more are meeting the same fate annually. While genre giants like World of Warcraft are expected to endure for decades, even they will eventually reach their end. Once the servers are deactivated, everything that players have painstakingly built will be lost.

Every year, countless new live-service games are launched, resulting in a highly saturated market. There are only so many players who are willing to invest weeks of their time in multiple titles, and there is a finite amount of money available to support them all. Many of these games will never find their target audience, while those that do will have to compete fiercely in a highly competitive industry. As a consequence, we have already witnessed numerous live-service closures, such as Knockout City, Apex Legends Mobile, Rumbleverse, and Marvel's Avengers. Undoubtedly, more closures are on the horizon.

It is disheartening to witness the closure of a prominent game like Call of Duty: Warzone, although it is expected in the current era. These closures are becoming increasingly commonplace in the gaming industry, prompting players to exercise caution when investing their time in such games. Ideally, live-service games would have a prolonged lifespan, but it appears that such a reality is still in the distant future.

Until September 21, Call of Duty: Warzone will continue to be accessible on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.