Most Live Service Games From 2025 Have Lost 90% of Their Players

by

Games that are continuously updated and supported after release—often called “live service” games—are seeing a significant drop in popularity in 2025. Several major new games have lost up to 90% of their players since their initial release, which is causing concerns about whether this type of game is sustainable in its current form.

We’re seeing a pattern across many game types – from shooters and action games to online RPGs. Lots of these games start strong, attracting many players at first. However, keeping that excitement going has been a challenge. After a few months, player numbers often drop significantly, and updates haven’t been able to fully bring them back up.

Live Service Player Retention Continues to Fall Short

The significant decrease in players isn’t just a series of small problems; it indicates deeper issues with how the game is being developed and maintained as a live service. Several games released in 2025 started with exciting plans for future content and seasonal events, but players lost interest before those plans could be realized.

These games all shared a similar problem with how players advanced and received new content. Instead of offering satisfying long-term goals, many relied on tasks that players had to repeat over and over, just to keep them coming back daily. Things like seasonal restarts, short-lived events, and endless grinding became the main focus. This made playing feel like a chore for a lot of people, rather than something genuinely fun.

As a player, one of the biggest issues I saw was how games tried to make money. They’d have these shops and ‘premium passes’ that were supposed to be optional, but they often felt essential to really get ahead or even just see everything the game had to offer. It wasn’t a huge deal at first, but as the player base started to shrink, people got really annoyed with how much the game pushed these purchases. It created a vicious cycle – the more they pushed, the more players left, and the more they had to push to make up for lost revenue. It just felt really frustrating.

As a player, one thing I noticed with a lot of the live service games that came out in 2025 was that many just didn’t stand out. There were so many already, and it felt like a lot of them were trying to be something they weren’t. They might have been easy to pick up and play because they used familiar stuff, but that also meant it was easy to get bored and go back to games I already loved. Honestly, without something really special to keep me hooked, I just moved on to something else.

The business impact is becoming clear: fewer players mean worse matchmaking and less potential for long-term profits. Games that need big, active communities to thrive start to fail when player numbers drop too low. We’re already seeing developers reduce their plans for updates and offer less support as a result.

Players are becoming increasingly wary of new games that rely on ongoing updates and purchases. Seeing so many games lose players quickly makes it feel risky to invest time and money, especially when it seems like developers are focusing more on numbers and data than on making the game fun.

The way games are updated with ongoing content (live services) is facing a problem: many games launch with big plans but struggle to keep players interested for very long. Keeping players engaged is the biggest challenge for these games, and recent releases haven’t met expectations. Data shows that when games focus too much on keeping players actively playing, and not enough on making the experience enjoyable, players tend to lose interest. This isn’t a one-off issue – more and more live service games are showing the same pattern of declining player numbers, suggesting a wider industry trend.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

Read More

2026-01-21 23:10