Steve Ahlman

Because when Concord happened, it really did feel like a reckoning for the live service model.

Not so much in that it was a wild miscalculation on Sony's part, but it genuinely felt like an indictment of that model.

for games that would have scared away most developers and most investors to go to this model anyway and obviously high guard was probably still very much in the works when concord came out i understand that things like this happen and the breaks aren't immediately pumped on projects like this because the the buy-in is too big anyway but it starts to make me think that

For the amount of returns that have actually happened, where games actually cheat death past a year, let alone a month or a couple of weeks at this point.

There have only been like five.

We're only talking about Overwatch 10 years later, and Marvel Rivals is probably suited to last for a couple more years, but we have very few examples in this attention economy of games that have the free-to-play model that don't do this.

And obviously layoffs suck, but I think if I were an employee at some of these things, knowing that I'm working on a free-to-play thing, that has to be kind of a, all right, once release happens...

polish that LinkedIn and resume because things are not looking good.

And obviously it's terrible to see people lose their jobs and everything.

But like, I'm very curious to win the people in the big suits that pay all this money for these things are going to learn that this is not sustainable.

And, but it's also like indicative of a lot of economic models that aren't sustainable and not profitable.

And only there's like one or two examples of when it is.

So very disappointing.

It definitely doesn't work in free-to-play online shooters.

I say this as somebody who genuinely really loves Horizon.

Stop trying to make Horizon happen.

It's not, because I tell you what, this IP is generationally cursed with a great, great, great set of gameplay mechanics and ideas and gorgeous art direction and incredible controls, and nobody plays it until three years later.

And everybody appreciates it.

And nobody in this space is going to be like,

I'm going to play a horizon game right away.