Live service gaming is such a mess that even Fortnite is struggling

For many years, major game publishers and developers have been chasing a particular north star: fortnite. With her Live events that shake the Internet and Celebrity cameos are abundantEpic’s battle royale shooter has become an example of what a live service game can be, one that has reached a level of cultural ubiquity that few other entertainment products can match while also raising all kinds of money. Many toy companies followed suit in an attempt to gain… fortnite-Like their cash cow.

The results were disastrous. The biggest live service games have hogged players’ time and money, leaving everyone fighting for scraps. Layoffs, game cancellations, and studio closures followed. Now it turns out even fortnitethe biggest name in the space, is struggling. Live service games are a bigger mess than I thought.

yesterday Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney announced that the company has cut more than 1,000 jobs (This just came up Three years after 830 jobs were eliminated). A number of reasons have been given for the layoffs, but the most surprising is the current situation fortnite. “The recession is in fortnite Sweeney explained that the engagement starting in 2025 means we are spending much more than we make, and we have to make significant cuts to keep the company funded. fortnite It remains one of the most successful games in the world, and we have faced challenges in delivering it consistently fortnite Magic with every season.”

The same thing that made fortnite Such success and the biggest player in the space is also what made maintaining it so difficult. It’s a huge game, constantly updated with new content, and costs a lot of money to keep up. Not this fortnite not popular (It remains one of the biggest games in the world on an annual basis(And it’s not that Epic doesn’t make money)Analyst firm Statista estimated that Epic generated more than $6 billion in revenue last year) – This is on a scale fortniteAnd even this is apparently not enough to make the game sustainable.

What this really means is that for the past few years, video game companies have been pursuing a goal that is impossible to achieve. There were some obvious failures in the live service e.g Concord, Haygardand FBC: fire Which simply wasn’t popular enough to continue. But the real problem is that even when the match He is Successful, it seems it can’t be successful enough because live service games are so demanding. It’s not just fortnite. Battlefield 6 It was deemed a success upon launch, EA has invested heavily to make this happenwith four of the publisher’s major studios working on the game. EA described the game as a “record success, breaking long-standing records for… battlefield privilege.” And then, The studios behind the success are still reeling from layoffs from earlier this month.

So what comes next? fortnite He’s a hungry maw that’s expensive to feed, and now Epic will have to do that with a smaller team. Maybe the plan is more focused; Along with the layoffs, Epic also announced the same Close a bunch of fortniteGame modes. It is too Previously high prices Because “operating cost fortnite It’s up a lot.” In his post announcing the layoffs, Sweeney said the company moving forward needed to be “a great build fortnite Experiences with new seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events.

This sounds a lot like how fortnite It actually works. Only now it has to be done with 1,000 fewer people, including a number of long-term developers who helped shape the game, such as Design Director Christopher Pope and Character designer Vitaly Naimushin. This seems like an almost impossible task. in Share on X, fortnite “Our teams are going to have to pick up the pieces and try to keep moving forward but we can’t even fully understand what kind of impacts this will have on the game for the rest of the year and possibly beyond,” gameplay producer Robbie Williams said.

Best case scenario is that Epic’s layoffs are a wake-up call for the industry. Studio closures and suspensions of previous games haven’t slowed down the release of new live service games; Sony and Bungie have just put out a great first-person shooter MarathonFor example. But it’s clear now that live service games are, at least as large and scaled as something like that fortniteNot a sustainable project. If the big game has difficulties, there won’t be many goals to pursue.