What happens when multiplayer games are switched off for good?

By Adam Starkey

Game developers and publishers have always competed for our time, but the fight has never been more desperate than in recent years. According to VG Insights’ 2024 PC games market report, the number of games released on Steam has been shooting up of late, especially since the COVID pandemic, from a total of 9,907 in 2020 to 13,900 in 2023. Simultaneously, more of those games are hoping to monopolise a player’s attention for years on end.

The 2023 Game Development Report, from Griffin Gaming Partners and Rendered VC, found that over 500 studios – 95 per cent of those surveyed – are currently working on a service game in some capacity. It’s not hard to see why this might be the case: you need look no further than Fortnite’s impact on popular culture for evidence of the potential rewards, not to mention the fervour that has accompanied Helldivers 2’s drop from orbit. In 2023, the top ten games on Steam accounted for 61 per cent of all revenue on the platform, according to VG Insights.

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But these success stories, by virtue of sticking around for so long, also represent the biggest obstacle to developers of would-be service-game hits. At this year’s GDC, Newzoo shared the results of an eye-opening study: just 66 titles accounted for 80 per cent of all playtime in 2023, while 60 per cent of spending was on games six years old or older. It’s hard to escape the sense that the map is shrinking – and any Fortnite player knows only too well what happens next.

The service-game battlefield is littered with casualties. For every Fortnite, there’s a Hyper Scape; for every Rocket League, a Rumbleverse – games which had their intended lifespans cut short. Scanning the list of games that shut down in 2023, you’ll find some of the industry’s biggest names. Babylon’s Fall, developed by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix. CrossfireX, the western version of Smilegate’s enormously popular FPS. The Tencent-backed Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt. The mobile versions of EA’s Apex Legends and Battlefield. And another EA title – at least, when it launched – Knockout City.

In a market dominated by shooters, Velan Studios’ powered-up take on dodgeball has no obvious rivals, and was warmly received by critics. It lasted just two years. “Multiplayer is particularly challenging for smaller studios,” reflects Knockout City director Jeremy Russo. The game was released in 2021 under the EA Originals label, also responsible forIt Takes Two, Wild Hearts andRocket Arena (the servers for which shut down in March 2024). At launch,Knockout City was a mid-price premium title, but pivoted to free-to-play a year later, a shift which coincided with Velan parting ways with its publisher and going independent.

“You want to maximise the number of people that can get into it so that you have a [larger] pool of players,” Russo says of the decision to drop the entrance fee. “But the free-to-play business model is really tough to [make] work if you don’t have the scale of a Call Of Duty or Fortnite.” Almost exactly a year after making the move, Knockout City’s servers shut off for good.

The main root cause was, as you might expect, a drop-off in player retention and monetisation, exacerbated by macroeconomic factors: worldwide inflation and currency devaluation in huge free-to-play markets such as East Asia. The team tried various ideas, but it became apparent that a larger, more fundamental change was needed to make Knockout City sustainable – the kind of overhaul that couldn’t be implemented while the game was live. “We believed we could turn it around,” Russo says. “The moment we realised that to do so required a bigger change, that’s when we made the decision to shut down.”