Baldur's Gate 3 is still seeing 100,000 concurrent players on Steam, proving that not every game needs to be live-service in 2024 (2024)

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Once Human, The First Descendant, Helldivers 2, Concord, Marvel Rivals, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. These are just a small selection of live-service games that have been released, or are set to launch, in 2024. This isn’t including the already established IPs such as Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Genshin Impact that helped to revolutionize modern gaming, for better or worse.

In a 2023 report by Griffin Gaming Partners which surveyed 537 studios, 95% of them were working on releasing a live-service game, with 66% saying that live-service is essential for the future of the gaming industry. Assuming that these are all of the studios in the world, which it is not, that would mean that over 500 live-service games were in active development at the end of 2023, how are we supposed to keep up with them?

There are only a finite amount of gamers in the world, each with only a select amount of time they can dedicate to video games each week. The problem, some live-service games need to be almost treated as a second job if you want to stay ahead, be able to keep up competitively, or absorb all of the lore and new content that comes with the frequent updates. With there being so many to choose from, the easiest solution is to…play something else.

I really enjoy Genshin Impact, I think the game was somewhere around the 2.4 update the last time I paid attention to it. The Finals is a fantastic FPS game, I haven’t played since April. XDefiant seems like a great alternative to Call of Duty, I haven’t even played a match yet, and so on. Helldivers 2 is a game that I cover a lot here at VideoGamer, and I enjoy the game, although it is incredibly stale right now as the dwindling player count eagerly awaits the arrival of The Illuminate. And I have been invested in Fortnite since 2018 so I don’t feel like I can abandon it.

All of these other great games exist, but I just can’t fit any more gaming into my schedule. If I feel like jumping onto a game for an hour, it is much easier to speedrun a playthrough of Resident Evil 2, than try and figure out all of the lore and changes that have been made in the latest The First Descendant patch, and I think many gamers are feeling the same way.

According to Steamdb, Baldur’s Gate 3, a game that was released in June 2023 and is largely a single-player game with optional multiplayer, is currently peaking at approximately 100,000 concurrent players on Steam alone, with that figure being 112,000 on July 21st. Granted, Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t like most games, it has won dozens of awards and is currently 21st on Metacritic with a score of 96%. But, it does show that gamers are favoring well-made and compelling games over the latest hot-off-the-press live-service title that likely won’t exist in two years.

Concord, Sony’s latest live-service title that looks to take some market share away from Overwatch 2 as a new contender in the 5v5 Hero Shooter genre, recently held its beta testing ahead of its launch next month. The game peaked at just over 2,300 players on Steam, which doesn’t seem promising for when it goes live in August, especially as it is a paid release rather than free-to-play. I will be very surprised if Concord sees any major long-term success. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is Warner Bros.’s take on live-service gaming, taking the established and beloved Arkham series and giving it a battle pass and online mechanics. The game currently peaks at around 300 players on Steam and holds a 19% rating on OpenCritic.

Although they may be the outliers, games such as Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 show that gamers still enjoy and want incredible single-player experiences. While they may not be dominating the Steam charts, which largely consist of live-service games, if that is all that is on offer, would we expect anything less? It will be interesting to see where the future of gaming does, but if it is in the direction of the market being flooded with live-service titles, pick your choice carefully and don’t get too emotionally invested in it because it probably won’t be around for very long.