10 Ways The Video Game Industry Takes Advantage Of Its Biggest Fans

8. Multiplayer-Only Games That Rely On Servers Will Always Die

There are a lot of multiplayer-only games on PC, games like Team Fortress 2, CS: GO and Guild Wars, games that sell themselves solely on their multiplayer alone. Of course, these games have received continual support long after release, and even when the developers do eventually lose interest, players can easily create their own user-servers to preserve the experience even longer.

The same cannot be said for consoles, where multiplayer-only games have a very limited lifespan. Games like Titanfall, Evolve and even new kid on the block, The Division, will eventually stop receiving support, at which point they€™ll essentially become completely redundant; they€™ll become wastelands, menu screens with no accessible content and no purpose, because the servers will simply be offline.

Besides that issue, while multiplayer-only games sell themselves on their online experience alone, games that did the same back in the early 2000s also included substantial single-player content. Halo 2 was sold as a multiplayer-game, but it still had a campaign; something to tie everything together and give players a sense of longevity, a sense that there€™ll still be a game left, long after the servers have been eventually shut down.

Contributor
Contributor

Formerly an assistant editor, Richard's interests include detective fiction and Japanese horror movies.