No matter how you feel about online discourse these days, some knee-jerk reactions to games online are having consequences. Whether it’s games from last year or more recently this year. The moment a game makes the wrong first impression, it is doomed to fail. What is even more troublesome is how people react to the reactions that cause said downfalls, because behind every reaction lies a reason for that reaction to occur. That being the fact that a pattern between multiple games from 2024 to this year can be detected, and to be as nice as I possibly can be about that pattern, it is for games that no one really asked for.
The pattern I would like to analyze is between some of the highest-profile failures. Not because looking back at something in a postmortem is enjoyable to people online, but because of how these failures feel like they all stem from being similar products. Something I would like to call “Pandemic Games”. As they all felt designed to appease the booming audience, the global pandemic accidentally created. Creating games that accidentally missed their pandemic bus.
The Rumbling Live Service Knockouts
During the pandemic, millions upon millions of people were, for lack of better words, locked in their homes. Going outside risked people’s health and even gave way for multiple food delivery service apps to become mainstays (if you have good credit). This also gave unsuspecting popularity to numerous live service titles that launched in 2020-2022 that may not have popped off originally. Such as Fall Guys, which is still played by tons of people today. As well as more niche titles, like Knockout City or Rumbleverse. Not to mention Ubisoft’s Hyperscape, which did not live long, but did have a curious audience. These were all Pandemic Games that launched at the right time. But, like all things, they do not last forever.
All of the above-mentioned games outside of Fall Guys are no longer playable. Knockout City was a fun dodgeball-like video game with interesting twists, while Rumbleverse wanted to add a Super Smash Bros. team-based twist to the battle royale genre. But even with these unique twists, neither lived long.
Live service games usually either live forever or sputter off into obscurity and turn the servers off. What makes these games not a failure when stacked against some of the more recent examples of Pandemic games is that they ended up with sizeable audiences and at least a season or two under their belt. They never truly hit their stride or lasted forever, but they did make an impact on the pandemic audience. Considering they did have some level of creativity to them (and really weird timing).
The First of the Suicide Squads
I think we can all agree that 2023 was one of the best years in video games in so long. So many juggernauts launched in that year, to the point where it felt like a battle royale between developers. A new Legend of Zelda game, the sequel to Jedi: Fallen Order, the remake of Resident Evil 4, and not to mention Alan Wake 2 and even Octopath Traveler 2. 2023 will go down as a very legendary year.
What eased the sorrow of what became 2024 was when Palworld and Helldivers 2 launched very strongly, which gave everyone some optimism for the rest of the year, considering the hard act to follow. The year 2023 was a transitional year for people getting away from the pandemic lifestyle. But what didn’t make that same transition was a lot of “leftovers” from delays and possible development hell behind the scenes for many games that launched in 2024.
The one that kicked off that trend was none other than Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. With Rocksteady at the helm, and a fun-looking looter-shooter gameplay loop, surely people would have gravitated towards it for a little bit of weekend fun, right? Well, unfortunately, its launch was killed with its launch, funnily enough.
People who bought the early access edition of the game randomly got a bug that somehow finished the main game’s campaign. Allowing people to share clips of the ending and its middling narrative experience on offer, the controversial usage of Kevin Conroy’s last performance as Batman in the story floated around online. A case of insult to injury that deterred many curious players from the game.
Tasting Beer After Champagne
After looking at what 2023 offered gamers worldwide, 2024 was filled with some high-profile games that no one was craving anymore. No one really asked Rocksteady for a looter-shooter with an in-game cash shop and seasonal content. It was an idea that, during 2020-2022, would have, similar to Knockout City, found a big enough audience and maybe persisted after its planned seasons. But that was not the case, as the game cost its publisher 200 million dollars, and the studio faced major layoffs. A consequence of being widely denied after missing what would have been a better release window during the pandemic.
But 2024 did not stop at Suicide Squad, as Sony’s newly acquired studio, Firewalk Studios, released Concord as a historic disaster. As someone who played one of the betas, the gameplay and movement were underwhelming. The controversial character designs that felt like extras in a sci-fi B movie, and underwhelming weaponry and abilities were widely mocked by the internet, and being a hero shooter on top of it all felt like the biggest misfire ever, and it was. According to Colin Moriarty from Sacred Symbols, Concord cost Sony 400 million dollars, and they made no money on it as they refunded the meager number of copies sold after the game was pulled offline after 2 weeks.
These are only two examples in a trend that, just recently, might be continuing. As a recent game reveal may be one of the last high-profile Pandemic games to come out.
Sprinting Towards a Wall
Back in May of 2023, Bungie revealed its revival of Marathon. Once a linear Doom-inspired shooter with a grunge and industrial aesthetic, it is now being made as a very strange-looking PvPvE Extraction shooter. Where you will go down to a map, look around for loot, and fight off other players and enemies in the environment while trying to escape with your findings. Now, the game’s new cinematic trailer has a very unique and bleak flavor to it. Mixing its new vibrant and surrealist visuals with mystery and brutality. The visual and audio design is very strong, but the genre choice is controversial.
Marathon, being an extraction shooter, is going to be what will deter many people. Games in its genre are very hardcore and therefore will only find a very small audience. This is due to games like Escape from Tarkov already occupying the space as the heaviest hitter. Many games that try to enter the hero shooter space, like Concord, have to try and pull players away from Overwatch 2. Or, in the battle royale space after Fortnite never truly found its footing. Obviously, Fortnite took over the space from PUBG, but battle royales were still relatively new.
Marathon does have a nostalgic name that may attract some old heads who became hardcore shooter fans. But to the wider audience that needs to be captured? An extraction shooter will be the biggest risk in the chosen genre to land in. This is made even worse when you consider Sony purchased Bungie for a few billion dollars. It could end up a financial flop that Bungie simply cannot afford. Especially when you factor in the constant decline of Destiny 2. The wider online audience is already raising the same question they did for Suicide Squad and Concord. That being “who asked for this?”
The Pattern Repeats
The pandemic caused a lot of changes in the industry. From major acquisitions, like Xbox and Activision Blizzard, or Sony and Bungie. All the way to a constant barrage of live service games that did, in fact, work out for a time. But after 2023 reminded the wider gaming world of major single-player titles in an equally massive barrage, 2024 and now 2025 have very high-profile leftovers that either already suffered immensely from their gambits or are about to.
Suicide Squad was a looter shooter that felt too generic to pull people away from mainstays (like Destiny 2 and Borderlands). Resulting in a game that suffered a miserable launch, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars and major layoffs. Concord suffered from many similar factors. What drove people away was its controversial genre choice and price tag, mostly. It launched and was shut down within 2 weeks, and its studio was shuttered shortly after. This, in turn, cost Sony more than Suicide Squad did for their publisher.
Now, with Marathon on the horizon, it seems like the pattern is repeating itself. A cool and polished-looking experience is dampened by its genre reveal, which leaves people questioning what audience it was intended for. With 2023 pivoting the gaming world away from what worked in 2020-2022, the leftover Pandemic Games that started the bulk of their development, and their studios, are going to continue to be left on the cutting room floor.
With Marathon potentially suffering the same fate. A cruel outcome that I hope does not continue to happen in the crazy world we live in now. But it is ultimately going to be up to the developers to listen and respect the audience they desperately need to succeed.
