Growing Trend: Online Game Shutdowns on Players
The Impact of Online Game Shutdowns on Players: A Growing Trend in 2024 🎮
In early September, Pokémon Quest, licensed by NetEase, announced its shutdown set for February 2025. This is just one of over 30 online games that have ceased operations this year alone, including titles from major companies like Tencent, NetEase, and Bilibili. Public data shows that nearly 80 games disappeared from the market in the past year, signaling a troubling trend in the industry.
As the gaming market rapidly expands, developers race to release new titles, trying to capture players’ attention. However, creating and maintaining a successful game in today’s crowded market is not easy. Corporations often discontinue games for several reasons:
⭕ Underperformance: Games that fail to meet revenue or engagement expectations often face shutdown. If players lose interest or the game can’t generate enough revenue to cover maintenance and operational costs, companies are quick to cut their losses.
⭕ Technical and Maintenance Costs: Ongoing development, bug fixes, and server maintenance are expensive. Games that don’t have a steady player base or strong in-game purchases to support these costs become financially unsustainable.
⭕ Shifting Player Preferences: The gaming landscape changes rapidly, with new trends and genres emerging constantly. Games that once thrived may no longer appeal to modern gamers. For example, Tencent’s ArcheAge, which launched in 2015, couldn’t keep up with current player tastes and had to shut down after a 9-year run.
⭕ Focus on Core Products: Larger companies like Tencent and NetEase now prefer to focus on a few core games that drive high user engagement and profitability, rather than spreading resources across multiple underperforming titles. This strategy ensures higher returns from top-tier games but leaves smaller games vulnerable to termination.
When a game shuts down, companies typically offer a compensation package to appease affected players. However, these packages are often controversial. Rather than offering cash refunds for unused virtual currency or items, companies usually provide in-game rewards or “gift packs” for other games in their portfolio. For example, when Tencent shut down Food Fantasy, players were offered rewards tied to Honor of Kings and Moonlight Blade.
This form of compensation leaves players frustrated, as it feels like a marketing ploy to drive traffic to other games, rather than a genuine attempt to compensate them for their time and monetary investment in the discontinued game.
With over 30 games already shutting down this year, this trend raises serious questions about the sustainability of current game development strategies and player compensation.
What do you think? Should companies rethink their approach to compensating players when games shut down? How can they ensure players are treated fairly?
