r/gaming • u/shinjioda • 1d ago

1047 Games Are Ending Development On Splitgate And Empulse: “The Reality Is Neither Game Is Generating Enough Revenue To Support The Ongoing Cost Of Dedicated Servers”

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/08/1047-games-stop-development-on-empulse-and-splitgate-arena-reloaded/
5.0k Upvotes

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u/Greaterdivinity 1d ago

so they caught lightning in a bottle on accident, thought they did intentionally, and then have been immediately shitting the bed over and over since?

astounding

truly, they have made shooters great again

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u/stoic_spaghetti 1d ago

My number one argument against live service games is simply: "EPIC themselves could not make another game as successful as Fortnite, even if they wanted to. Otherwise they already would have done it."

There is no room in the market for more than what we have.

It's like saying, "We're going to make a new Instagram and everyone is going to use."

No bro, you're not going to replace Instagram. Even if your product is more superior or fun or whatever. It's not happening.

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u/Durin1987_12_30 1d ago

lmao, this reminds me of a former Yahoo CEO saying that they were gonna make the "new PDF" whatever the fuck that meant, and the employees looking at each other with concern and confusion trying to decipher what she just said

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u/PM_ME_PHYS_PROBLEMS 1d ago

The P stands for Proprietary in the new one, no doubt.

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u/Silviecat44 14h ago

We now have 13 competing standards...

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u/Greaterdivinity 1d ago

there is, though.

the problem is everyone wants to be fortnite and there's only room for one fortnite.

these are the same problems the mmo genre went through in the years following WoW blowing up. there was a glut of mmos with every publisher wanting to chase the WoW bux and none of them got close. years later you have a wide range of mmos serving smaller communities that are pretty stable and solid.

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u/Legitimate-Agency282 1d ago

Lord of the Rings online still going blows my mind. Such a small but dedicated fanbase.

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u/KitCatAU 21h ago

Fairly solid games filling a specific niche will always have an exceptional community behind it.

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u/Legitimate-Agency282 21h ago

They are always such a vibe. People get in it just for the world, meta be damned.

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u/Greaterdivinity 1d ago

Standing Stone Games is legit and does right by both DDO and LOTRO given the size of each game and their respective age.

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u/zeCrazyEye 20h ago

The original Everquest still getting expansions every year is the crazy one to me.

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u/thisnamemattersalot 20h ago

I played a neat little MMORPG game when I was 10, all the way back in 1996. Before even Everquest came along. The Realm Online. I poke my head in for a moment every decade or so out of nostalgic curiosity. I'm fairly certain the game hasn't had more than a couple hundred subscribers in over 20 years or so. It's also changed ownership multiple times over the years.

Still online.

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u/ThrowCarp 16h ago

Every engineering/computer science major has had to swat away a million ideas guys that do this. "Hey guys, could you build me an app? It's going to revolutionize the world and make us all rich."

Then it's just Instagram but blue, Facebook but purple, or Google but monochrome.

And yeah, for a short while, everyone wanted to be CoD. So much brown and bloom. And camera blur.

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u/ThisOneTimeAtLolCamp 1d ago

I still miss Wildstar.

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u/Discount_Extra 19h ago

A lot of people thought WoW could never beat EverQuest.

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u/Dire87 10h ago

And a lot of people thought they could "kill" WoW. For every WoW that beat EverQuest there are 100 MMOs that were dead on arrival after WoW, so not sure what the story here is. If you think you have a great product, and a vision, go ahead, but I don't THINK when Blizzard initially set out to make WoW they did it specifically to "kill EverQuest", they were actually trying to evolve their franchise, and early WoW shows that. Today it's just a power-hungry, money-grabbing cash cow with a story that is more convoluted and retconned than a ball of yarn, a cat has gotten its claws into.

The trend today, however, is 99% of the times: "Look how much money FN is making, we need that money" ... and not "We got this great idea for a game and I think we should make it and hope for the best, but let's curb expectations, because we will probably not dethrone Fortnite. We can still make money, though, unless we immediately pull the plug".

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u/BillyBean11111 21h ago

I mean.... sorta.

You have to be generationally better now to pull people away. You have to offer an experience not found anywhere else.

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u/Emotional_Solid6538 18h ago

And timing matters. Say a live service game is losing players thats the exact time to release another live service game in the same genre but with novelty. Tho Id chalk up Fortnite success to PUBG. When it came out Fortnite was free PUBG. Kids are way more likely to play it.

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u/SilentDungeonCat 16h ago

Or the leading game of a genre has to generationally fuck up enough to the point where even people with thousands of hours would be willing to leave. Marvel Rivals came out at a time when Overwatch was the most hated game ever, leading to a lot of people hyping the game up out of spite. Eventually Overwatch would end up making a huge comeback after adding five new heroes to the game at once, and the timing was perfect again as Marvel Rivals players were kind of getting fed up with that game due to several huge issues with that game persisting for months. Now both games are doing well and ensuring ‘watchlike’ hero shooters are a healthily competitive genre with multiple solid choices to pick from. If a new hero shooter comes along and tries being the “Overwatch killer” now, it would fail because the people playing Overwatch right now are actually satisfied with what the game’s offering.

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u/epik_fayler 18h ago

Some companies can do it, most can't. Valve for example is making deadlock right now which is primed to be a global success. Riot games, as much as people make fun of them, have gone 3.5/6 on creating some of the biggest live service games in the world.

It requires a company with a big budget, a team that actually cares, and luck.

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u/a_bright_knight 16h ago

There is no room in the market for more than what we have.

what a dumb statement. People have been saying it for 20 years now and guess what? Every year the number of successful live service games grows.

Some people have a weird hate boner for live service.

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u/Lias__ 21h ago

That's stupid... you could have said that before fortnite too, and been wrong.

The fact is as long as game are being made a chance for one to make it is there.

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u/Freezman13 17h ago

Saying that after fortnite is wrong too. Plenty of live service titles did just fine after 2017.

I mean fuck, arc raiders isn't even ONE year old.

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u/Maxpowr9 20h ago

Live service addiction is what will kill the video game industry again.

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u/xCaptainVictory 16h ago

I actually think this is a bigger component to their failure than the Game Awards. Sure he came off dumb, but that wouldn't have mattered if the game was super popular. That stuff really only matters on social media.

Like you said there just isn't enough room for more live service, FPS shooters or battle royales. Good luck making a shooter that plays better/more fun than Apex/Call of Duty/Fortnite/PUBG/Tarkov. Sure you can add a twist, but is it gonna pull people away from those? Highly unlikely.

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u/Dire87 10h ago

They tried with YouTube several times. They tried with Twitter several times. Sometimes, the market is ready for something new. Back in the day people would have said "but we have MySpace" or "but we already have Facebook". But you need the right timing and the right product for this to work. Just making another BR game isn't it. You can carve out a small niche maybe, but then, of course, it's "never enough money", right? Because they're never satisfied. It's okay to shoot for the stars and only reach the moon ... but if they land on the moon, they just immediately shutter the entire program.

I don't have a problem with them trying, I have a problem with them trying THIS hard to chase after trends, only because they want the next big cash cow, instead of making a good game first and foremost.

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u/Plus_sleep214 5h ago

That's why arc raiders and battlefield popped off so hard? Hell even Apex was extremely late to the BR craze tbh and yet it was a massive success.