Steve Sinclair, CEO of Digital Extremes, didn’t hold back as the studio’s experience and track record shows how to approach a genre.

In an interview with VGC, Sinclair talked about how quickly major publishers (we could go on for days and give you an example of each) abandon their live service games when they get into trouble at launch. And really, how many times has this happened where a game launched in bad shape and then a year later was maybe completely unplayable?

“They think that release is make or break, and it’s not. They have a financial way to be persistent, and they never do. It comes out, it doesn’t work, and they throw it away. Isn’t that a shame when you put so many years of your life into iterating on these systems or building the technology or building the beginning of a community, and because the cost of ownership is high, you get scared when you see the numbers go down and you walk away. We’ve seen that with amazing releases that I think have tremendous potential, and I think they get kicked out too early,” Sinclair said.

Electronic Arts’ Knockout City lasted only two years, Smilegate’s Crossfire X lasted just over a year, and PlatinumGames’ Babylon’s Fall didn’t even last that long, becoming unplayable after eleven months. Another example from Electronic Arts: Anthem, which was released at full price, crashed after two years. By comparison, Digital Extreme’s Warframe was an early example of the model, released in 2013, and 11 years later it’s still going strong: its next major update, Warframe 1999, is coming out this year.

So the big publishers want the money now and don’t plan for the long term with these games. Unfortunately, a lot of work is wasted, especially when the games become unplayable.

Source: VGC