For almost a decade, live-service features have been de rigeur for most games – but with live-service projects being cancelled or pivoted to single player, it a
Hard disagree -before it went Free to Play, Team Fortress 2 was a shining example of GaaS! A steady stream of updates and external media that constantly kept that game in the limelight.
Games As A Service is not a scam in and of itself - the issue is the greedy people often behind them.
At least with Team Fortress 2 they have always had dedicated servers you can host yourself. Most GaaS never provide a server that you can run and host yourself.
There are lots of good examples, they’re usually smaller studios/indie though. GaaS sucks when you get the people with business degrees in on it. It’s great for people who are working on a game they’re passionate about and just want to keep adding more content.
well that’s the thing, it went free to play. Pretty classic enshittification arc.
I don’t remember any one thing getting worse with TF2 after that change. What would be enshitified for it? Microtransaction cosmetics? I’ve never had a problem with those, as long as they are just cosmetic. If they change the balance of a game though, I simply refuse to play those games.
While Overwatch and CS:GO are often games pointed to as the one that popularized and lead to the loot box/gambling popularly, TF2’s implementation of crates/keys is a clear point of inspiration for those games :(
However I agree, the initial Free To Play decision wasn’t a bad thing for TF2, though the culmination of that with the store/creator relationship and how things evolved in the company have lead to a less than desired development cycle for TF2 content when you look at what Valve actually provides in modern updates. And we waited how long for that comic? :P
Hard disagree -before it went Free to Play, Team Fortress 2 was a shining example of GaaS!
How was TF2 (pre-FTP) a GaaS? I bought it in the Orange Box for a one-time cost. Where is the as-a-service component to that business model you’re citing?
They performed multiple free content updates over several years. I believe Gabe is quoted as saying the GaaS model had replaced the episodic model for them, the idea being that they weren’t selling a product, but a service that would continue passed the exchange of funds.
We saw that in their games during that period like Left 4 Dead 1/2 as well.
As time has gone on, we’ve seen approaches to the idea morph to the anti-consumer versions we see and associate with the name, but there was a time when it wasn’t a negative.
I don’t think Unreal Tournament 2004 would have been considered live service just because they occasionally gave out a free new map. It was a form of marketing for the thing they already made. TF2 at least was a product when they sold it up front before it was free to play, when it had no microtransactions and they weren’t the goal for getting paid for having made TF2.
It was always the goal, just a different approach. I posted this quote in another reply but:
"The crux of the Newell’s address focused on the concept that direct communications with customers, transparency, and constant updates are the best ways to maximize profits from a product. In this way, Valve views its products as a service rather than a finished project. When the company shipped Team Fortress 2, work wasn’t done. Rather, the team said, “Now we can start.” The team has then gone on to ship 63 updates – which include anything from bug fixes to new game modes – to the game in just over 14 months. This can directly result in increased sales that would normally taper off over time. As Newell put it, “When you want to promote your product, you’re going to use your customers to reach new customers.” " https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/02/19/dice-2009-keynote-gabe-newell
The thought pattern still has roots in sales/marketing - by releasing more content for the game, you attract new players. I would say No Mans Sky is a good example of this in recent years - its free content updates leading to constant attention and sales. No other forms of monetization are included.
I played UT2004 but was too young to recall things, but if the game did this through game updates I’d consider it an early form of Games as a Service. However, I consider Live Services to be a sub-classification under the banner, which by my definition UT2004 would not be:
I think of games that provide ongoing content, and maintains the game servers in exchange for varying streams of income. These are games that will typically “stop working” when the official servers go down (stop being “live”?). I consider games like Anthem and Loadout to be examples of Live Services in this respect.
So while L4D2 was by definition an example of a Game as a Service, it has a different approach to the concept compared to a game like Destiny 2. From how the game is played (offline/online, hosting servers), to how it is monetized and the updates are delivered can vary significantly.
I believe that all Live Services fall under the GaaS label, but not all games that fall under the GaaS label are Live Services. The lines have just become so blurred that it is hard to consider that games that can be so different fall under that label. We are in the pot, and the temperature is getting higher.
I don’t think you’re going to find many sharing your definitions. GaaS has just been simply replaced by the term live service in how people talk about this stuff. Perhaps Valve showed their hand early with this interview, but the expectation we had as customers with early TF2 was very different back then. I definitely wouldn’t consider No Man’s Sky to be any form of service; it might be the industry’s best example of being a form of penance for what they promised their customers at the start.
I agree that up to a point their approach was to fix things, but at a certain point they reached the point of achieving most everything they promised. Then kept going and adding more.
However, my point of bringing it up is that even in the past few years, the game has continued to be updated and each update brings with it new players/sales, as well as further marketing thanks to the attention those updates get.
This was one of the significant reasons stated for the approach to GaaS by companies like Valve back in the day, and No Mans Sky is an example that this is something that can be done in the modern era.
I also agree that the concept has been bastardized in recent years. As I see it and as was defined at the time, games like Left 4 Dead 2 are/were delivered as “Games as a Service”. Yet despite that fact, Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t include the trappings that are attached to “Live Services” of the modern era.
Like many things, big publishers have corrupted what started off as a pure win for consumers…but that is why I make the distinction of “Live Services” as a fork from the concept.
I think you may be using a different definition of GaaS than mine. My definition includes a regular fee to play or a subscription as a continuous revenue generation from the product. From your replies I don’t think your definition does. That leaves me more confused about your definition.
When I think of Games as a Service, I think of things like:
"The crux of the Newell’s address focused on the concept that direct communications with customers, transparency, and constant updates are the best ways to maximize profits from a product. In this way, Valve views its products as a service rather than a finished project. When the company shipped Team Fortress 2, work wasn’t done. Rather, the team said, “Now we can start.” The team has then gone on to ship 63 updates – which include anything from bug fixes to new game modes – to the game in just over 14 months. This can directly result in increased sales that would normally taper off over time. As Newell put it, “When you want to promote your product, you’re going to use your customers to reach new customers.” "
https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/02/19/dice-2009-keynote-gabe-newell
Games as a Service I think of as an overarching concept based around the idea of service not stopping at the point of sale. After that, the different approaches are almost “sub-classifications”.
There are those games that are touted as “Live Services” - when I use that term, I think of games that provide ongoing content, and maintains the game servers in exchange for varying streams of income. These are games that will typically “stop working” when the official servers go down. I consider games like Anthem and Loadout to be examples of Live Services in this respect.
Games like World of Warcraft I consider Live Services, but I go one further and call those “subscription services”, since they require the subscription to play and in theory this is the main income that funds the game staying online.
The way I see it, all Live/Subscription Services fall under the Games as a Service banner, but not all Games as a Service will necessarily be either.
To me, it’s more nuanced than one general classification, especially with the way things blend together these days; games can have multiple income streams (subscription, microtransactions, battlepasses, season passes, so on), as well as multiple forms of content delivery (free updates, expansions, DLC).
The lines have been blurred further with “early access” and “incomplete” titles being released that have constant content updates simply to get to a release state. However, these types of games have those stars that typically shine through. Such as No Mans Sky or (contentiously) Fallout 76.
tl;dr To me GaaS is the literal idea of treating games as more than a one-time product, but evolution in how content is delivered and monetized have lead to many different approaches.
Unfortunately, the normalized ones (the maliciously monetized and despair-inducing) are so far apart from the “good ones” like L4D2, that it is difficult to consider that they are both actually examples of “Games as a Service”.
Games as a Service I think of as an overarching concept based around the idea of service not stopping at the point of sale. After that, the different approaches are almost “sub-classifications”.
By your definition, we’ve had Games-as-a-Service since the dawn age of home PC gaming.
This is a game called Temple of Apshai. It was released in 1979 for TRS-80 and Commodore PET home computers. The years ahead would see it released on Apple II, Atari, Commondore 64, and others.
Two years later in 1981 this paid expansion kit (software addon) was released (for Apple II and TRS-80). To use the expansion, you needed to own the original game. It added on additional maps and levels to play using the same game engine as the original. This would seem to match your definition of “not stopping at the point of sale” because obtaining the expansion kit would require yet another trip to the point of sale to continue to play the new content.
tl;dr To me GaaS is the literal idea of treating games as more than a one-time product, but evolution in how content is delivered and monetized have lead to many different approaches.
Then what you’re citing as GaaS as a new phenomenon has been with us since the beginning.
It’s long and I’m sorry.
No need to apologize. I appreciate the time and you took to explain your thoughts. It gave me a more clear view of your vision, and I appreciate that understanding. Even though I only quoted a small part of your post, I read and considered the whole thing.
I absolutely appreciate your response - I rarely get a chance to discuss this topic and have my ideas on it refined or thrown out through discourse. And hoo boy, it’s another long one but I love talking about stuff like this.
I want to say first that I agree that there might be earlier games that exhibited examples of the philosophies in the definition provided by Valve back in 2008-2011 and my definition, but my stance is that digital distribution platforms made it more feasible for games to be developed in such an ongoing way and lead to it becoming a more prominent idea. A rough parallel could be drawn between the way DOOM popularized First Person Shooters, yet there were definitely games of the genre before it.
Some games were developed that employ similar or the same philosophies to GaaS, but it was less common and easy (I remember getting “official” content for games by having to go to a website, find the download link, download the maps, etc) until the technology caught up.
On Temple of Apshai, I see your points but I don’t agree that it completely breaks my ideas surrounding what makes a Game as a Service… I think I should clarify that I consider a “point of sale” to be when I have to make a purchase to have the content.
I consider the ports and expansion to fall under points of sale, as a result. You are purchasing exactly the products as boxed, and nothing else takes place beyond that exchange. You have the product to play, the developer’s obligation to you is finished.
Expansions are an arguable bit of grey area, since they do technically build upon the earlier game, but I still think of that as a straightforward point of sale; The only content is that which you buy, with no additional content or service provided by the developer beyond them.
I consider Diablo 2 and the Lord of Destruction expansion to be an early example of GaaS, since after the points of sale the game received additional content (I think to online play only).
I acknowledge the water definitely gets muddied with this digital age. Some games receive a stream of paid expansions over time, like Borderlands or Fallout 3. However, I struggle to consider these to be Games as a Service - these items are all independent points of purchase.
If a game has a mix of paid and free content updates, then I’d consider it a GaaS because of the things other than the paid DLC/expansions.
I know that my ability to word my ideas is flawed and limited to my own vocabulary, and there are undoubtedly issues with my definitions. I don’t think my ideas are completely without merit though, and believe I just need to refine them somewhat, which can only be done through beholding a plucked chicken.
Hard disagree -before it went Free to Play, Team Fortress 2 was a shining example of GaaS! A steady stream of updates and external media that constantly kept that game in the limelight.
Games As A Service is not a scam in and of itself - the issue is the greedy people often behind them.
At least with Team Fortress 2 they have always had dedicated servers you can host yourself. Most GaaS never provide a server that you can run and host yourself.
One shiny red apple on a pile of rotting fruit does not make an apple pie.
Games as a service was always enshittification wearing a trench coat. TF2 and MMOs back in the day were merely bait.
There are lots of good examples, they’re usually smaller studios/indie though. GaaS sucks when you get the people with business degrees in on it. It’s great for people who are working on a game they’re passionate about and just want to keep adding more content.
they weren’t intentional bait, the MBAs just hadn’t invented all the ways to scam users with it yet.
While that might be true it was foreseeable. And they always do it.
well that’s the thing, it went free to play. Pretty classic enshittification arc.
I don’t remember any one thing getting worse with TF2 after that change. What would be enshitified for it? Microtransaction cosmetics? I’ve never had a problem with those, as long as they are just cosmetic. If they change the balance of a game though, I simply refuse to play those games.
While Overwatch and CS:GO are often games pointed to as the one that popularized and lead to the loot box/gambling popularly, TF2’s implementation of crates/keys is a clear point of inspiration for those games :(
However I agree, the initial Free To Play decision wasn’t a bad thing for TF2, though the culmination of that with the store/creator relationship and how things evolved in the company have lead to a less than desired development cycle for TF2 content when you look at what Valve actually provides in modern updates. And we waited how long for that comic? :P
to me, loot boxes/crates are an unethical gamifying of monetization, even if it’s only for cosmetic items.
How was TF2 (pre-FTP) a GaaS? I bought it in the Orange Box for a one-time cost. Where is the as-a-service component to that business model you’re citing?
They performed multiple free content updates over several years. I believe Gabe is quoted as saying the GaaS model had replaced the episodic model for them, the idea being that they weren’t selling a product, but a service that would continue passed the exchange of funds. We saw that in their games during that period like Left 4 Dead 1/2 as well.
As time has gone on, we’ve seen approaches to the idea morph to the anti-consumer versions we see and associate with the name, but there was a time when it wasn’t a negative.
I don’t think Unreal Tournament 2004 would have been considered live service just because they occasionally gave out a free new map. It was a form of marketing for the thing they already made. TF2 at least was a product when they sold it up front before it was free to play, when it had no microtransactions and they weren’t the goal for getting paid for having made TF2.
It was always the goal, just a different approach. I posted this quote in another reply but:
The thought pattern still has roots in sales/marketing - by releasing more content for the game, you attract new players. I would say No Mans Sky is a good example of this in recent years - its free content updates leading to constant attention and sales. No other forms of monetization are included.
I played UT2004 but was too young to recall things, but if the game did this through game updates I’d consider it an early form of Games as a Service. However, I consider Live Services to be a sub-classification under the banner, which by my definition UT2004 would not be:
So while L4D2 was by definition an example of a Game as a Service, it has a different approach to the concept compared to a game like Destiny 2. From how the game is played (offline/online, hosting servers), to how it is monetized and the updates are delivered can vary significantly.
I believe that all Live Services fall under the GaaS label, but not all games that fall under the GaaS label are Live Services. The lines have just become so blurred that it is hard to consider that games that can be so different fall under that label. We are in the pot, and the temperature is getting higher.
I don’t think you’re going to find many sharing your definitions. GaaS has just been simply replaced by the term live service in how people talk about this stuff. Perhaps Valve showed their hand early with this interview, but the expectation we had as customers with early TF2 was very different back then. I definitely wouldn’t consider No Man’s Sky to be any form of service; it might be the industry’s best example of being a form of penance for what they promised their customers at the start.
I agree that up to a point their approach was to fix things, but at a certain point they reached the point of achieving most everything they promised. Then kept going and adding more.
However, my point of bringing it up is that even in the past few years, the game has continued to be updated and each update brings with it new players/sales, as well as further marketing thanks to the attention those updates get. This was one of the significant reasons stated for the approach to GaaS by companies like Valve back in the day, and No Mans Sky is an example that this is something that can be done in the modern era.
I also agree that the concept has been bastardized in recent years. As I see it and as was defined at the time, games like Left 4 Dead 2 are/were delivered as “Games as a Service”. Yet despite that fact, Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t include the trappings that are attached to “Live Services” of the modern era. Like many things, big publishers have corrupted what started off as a pure win for consumers…but that is why I make the distinction of “Live Services” as a fork from the concept.
I think you may be using a different definition of GaaS than mine. My definition includes a regular fee to play or a subscription as a continuous revenue generation from the product. From your replies I don’t think your definition does. That leaves me more confused about your definition.
What is your definition of Games-as-a-Service?
When I think of Games as a Service, I think of things like:
Games as a Service I think of as an overarching concept based around the idea of service not stopping at the point of sale. After that, the different approaches are almost “sub-classifications”.
There are those games that are touted as “Live Services” - when I use that term, I think of games that provide ongoing content, and maintains the game servers in exchange for varying streams of income. These are games that will typically “stop working” when the official servers go down. I consider games like Anthem and Loadout to be examples of Live Services in this respect. Games like World of Warcraft I consider Live Services, but I go one further and call those “subscription services”, since they require the subscription to play and in theory this is the main income that funds the game staying online.
The way I see it, all Live/Subscription Services fall under the Games as a Service banner, but not all Games as a Service will necessarily be either. To me, it’s more nuanced than one general classification, especially with the way things blend together these days; games can have multiple income streams (subscription, microtransactions, battlepasses, season passes, so on), as well as multiple forms of content delivery (free updates, expansions, DLC).
The lines have been blurred further with “early access” and “incomplete” titles being released that have constant content updates simply to get to a release state. However, these types of games have those stars that typically shine through. Such as No Mans Sky or (contentiously) Fallout 76.
tl;dr To me GaaS is the literal idea of treating games as more than a one-time product, but evolution in how content is delivered and monetized have lead to many different approaches. Unfortunately, the normalized ones (the maliciously monetized and despair-inducing) are so far apart from the “good ones” like L4D2, that it is difficult to consider that they are both actually examples of “Games as a Service”.
It’s long and I’m sorry.
By your definition, we’ve had Games-as-a-Service since the dawn age of home PC gaming.
This is a game called Temple of Apshai. It was released in 1979 for TRS-80 and Commodore PET home computers. The years ahead would see it released on Apple II, Atari, Commondore 64, and others.
Two years later in 1981 this paid expansion kit (software addon) was released (for Apple II and TRS-80). To use the expansion, you needed to own the original game. It added on additional maps and levels to play using the same game engine as the original. This would seem to match your definition of “not stopping at the point of sale” because obtaining the expansion kit would require yet another trip to the point of sale to continue to play the new content.
Then what you’re citing as GaaS as a new phenomenon has been with us since the beginning.
No need to apologize. I appreciate the time and you took to explain your thoughts. It gave me a more clear view of your vision, and I appreciate that understanding. Even though I only quoted a small part of your post, I read and considered the whole thing.
I absolutely appreciate your response - I rarely get a chance to discuss this topic and have my ideas on it refined or thrown out through discourse. And hoo boy, it’s another long one but I love talking about stuff like this.
I want to say first that I agree that there might be earlier games that exhibited examples of the philosophies in the definition provided by Valve back in 2008-2011 and my definition, but my stance is that digital distribution platforms made it more feasible for games to be developed in such an ongoing way and lead to it becoming a more prominent idea. A rough parallel could be drawn between the way DOOM popularized First Person Shooters, yet there were definitely games of the genre before it. Some games were developed that employ similar or the same philosophies to GaaS, but it was less common and easy (I remember getting “official” content for games by having to go to a website, find the download link, download the maps, etc) until the technology caught up.
On Temple of Apshai, I see your points but I don’t agree that it completely breaks my ideas surrounding what makes a Game as a Service… I think I should clarify that I consider a “point of sale” to be when I have to make a purchase to have the content.
I consider the ports and expansion to fall under points of sale, as a result. You are purchasing exactly the products as boxed, and nothing else takes place beyond that exchange. You have the product to play, the developer’s obligation to you is finished.
Expansions are an arguable bit of grey area, since they do technically build upon the earlier game, but I still think of that as a straightforward point of sale; The only content is that which you buy, with no additional content or service provided by the developer beyond them. I consider Diablo 2 and the Lord of Destruction expansion to be an early example of GaaS, since after the points of sale the game received additional content (I think to online play only).
I acknowledge the water definitely gets muddied with this digital age. Some games receive a stream of paid expansions over time, like Borderlands or Fallout 3. However, I struggle to consider these to be Games as a Service - these items are all independent points of purchase. If a game has a mix of paid and free content updates, then I’d consider it a GaaS because of the things other than the paid DLC/expansions.
I know that my ability to word my ideas is flawed and limited to my own vocabulary, and there are undoubtedly issues with my definitions. I don’t think my ideas are completely without merit though, and believe I just need to refine them somewhat, which can only be done through beholding a plucked chicken.
Also it is 7am and I should sleep.