Almost Every Live-Service Game Released Last Year Has Haemorrhaged Players

Making a live-service game is seemingly a poisoned chalice, but that doesn't stop out-of-touch executives from chasing trends and aiming to make the next big thing. Sadly, for every Fortnite, there are a dozen or more Concords, and 2025 seems to have continued that trend.

The year saw an array of live-service and live-service-adjacent titles launch, but as we move into 2026, it seems many are already struggling, with most losing between 80–99 percent of their players since launch.

The Live Service Curse Continued Into 2025 With Most Games Losing Between 80-99 Percent Of Players

We looked at 19 of 2025's biggest live-service or live-service-adjacent titles to see how their player counts were holding up. And many of them have seen significant declines.

By live-service-adjacent, we mean games that incorporate some elements of live-service games, typically multiplayer games with features designed to entice players to keep returning - such as Elden Ring Nightreign's rotating Everdark Sovereign bosses - but aren't typically live-service.

Of those 19, using data from SteamDB, 11 games (Supervive, FragPunk, Mecha Break, Killing Floor 3, InZoi, Blue Protocol: Star Resonance, FBC: Firebreak, Dune: Awakening, Splitgate 2, Rematch, and Skate) have lost more than 90 percent of their players on Steam.

A further four (Sonic Rumble, Persona 5: The Phantom X, Runescape: Dragonwilds, and Battlefield 6) have lost over 80 percent of players from their Steam peaks, and two have lost over 70 percent (Umamusume: Pretty Derby and Elden Ring Nightreign).

In fact, only two games have lost fewer than 50 percent of their Steam players, with one of the year's biggest hits, Arc Raiders, losing just 3.2 percent from its peak, and Wuthering Waves continuing to grow and actually hitting its peak on Steam within the last month.

The full data from our research can be found below (correct as of January 19, 2026):

The Problems With Live-Service Games Continue

You only have to look at some of 2025's best-performing games, like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and even Schedule 1, to see that a large percentage of audiences don't want this type of game — yet developers persist, chasing a dream.

These games often come from the demands of out-of-touch C-suite execs who see the success of games like Fortnite, Marvel Rivals, and Apex Legends and figure that it's the perfect way to make line on graph go brrrrrr, forgetting about what audiences actually want, and often abandoning what made their studios great.

Five of these 19 games have come from studios and franchises typically focused on single-player games, yet have been forced into the world of GaaS. You could argue Nightreign, with its lack of traditional battle pass or cosmetics, was a success, but Skate, FBC: Firebreak, Sonic Rumble, and Persona 5: The Phantom X seem like unnecessary forays into the world of live-service, and they've paid the price. FBC: Firebreak is arguably the biggest example of why these studios should stick to what they do best.

Control and Alan Wake studio Remedy is known for its excellent, immersive single-player experiences, but for some reason, it felt the need to chase the live-service unicorn. Its latest game, FBC: Firebreak, peaked at a measly 1,992 players on Steam, and has, over the last 30 days, never had more than 100 playing at once. Its mixed reception at launch certainly didn't help things.

Four months after its release, and its already paltry player count waning, Remedy's CEO fell on his sword, stepping down from the company, something which, in my humble opinion, should be more commonplace with these failed attempts at mass adoption, rather than sacrificing the hardworking staff.

Supervive, a game which stepped out of early access in 2025, was another major casualty. Less than five months after its full launch, with 99 percent of its players abandoning the game, it was canned. Another NetEase game, FragPunk looks likely to face a similar fate, retaining just two percent of the players it had at launch.

Mecha Break, InZoi, Skate, Killing Floor 3, and Blue Protocol: Star Resonance are other games that have managed to retain fewer than five percent of players.

Of course, this data only considers the games' Steam player counts. However, you have to imagine that there isn't a big enough disparity between Steam players and console players for our C-suite friends to be resting easy.

There Was The Odd Diamond In The Rough Last Year

I can't speak for the Battlefield 6 team, but despite losing 82 percent of its players on Steam, a peak concurrent count of almost 130k is still solid. The same goes for Dune: Awakening, which peaked at over 10,000 concurrent players recently, and Runescape: Dragonwilds, which, despite dropping to a peak of 826 across the whole of November, has rallied back to 8,797 players.

Even some of these games, which have lost 95 percent or more of their players, may still be deemed successful, with in-game consumer spending and the elusive whales often dictating what a success is and what isn't.

Two games on the above list stand out more than the rest, though: Arc Raiders and Wuthering Waves. We'll start with WuWa.

Wuthering Waves has built a committed player base, a player base that would seemingly go to hell and back for the game, fighting the likes of Genshin Impact and Clair Obscur for The Game Awards' Players Voice award, and winning. Much of this is down to communication.

The relationship between WuWa players and its developers is symbiotic, if not, as is so often the case with these games, a little predatory. In return for them playing the game, Kuro Games will ply them with content, and it's worked.

2025's big winner, though, is Arc Raiders. While it hasn't had as long as, say, Dune: Awakening or Splitgate 2 for its player count to diminish, two months after launch, Arc Raiders still regularly sees between 200,000 - 400,000 players online at the same time, hitting a new record high earlier this year.

While generative AI has alienated portions of its audience, Arc Raiders feels like an earnest attempt at making a really good game, and not one that's just in it for the money. Like Helldivers 2 before it, Arc Raiders launched at a discounted price, and its unique gameplay loop, frequent updates, and approach to player fairness have helped it retain such a significant portion of its audience.

So How Is 2026 Shaping Up?

2026's first two live-service titles look like they could set the tone for GaaS this year.

The first to launch is the upcoming Gacha Game, Arknights: Endfield. It's the type of game that will, undoubtedly, launch to a huge audience, but early reviews are decidedly mixed, with the game sitting at a 79 on Metacritic.

Then there's Highguard, a game that's received precisely zero marketing since its disastrous showing at 2025's Game Awards, and one that simply has no buzz around its launch. Of course, it is being created by developers who were behind Apex Legends' phenomenal shadow drop back in 2019, but this feels like it's doomed to fail.

Bungie, after years of layoffs, is surprisingly the company that has the chance to put a stake in the ground with its upcoming GaaS title, Marathon. After the game's release date announcement, and the reveal of its star-studded cast, the game rocketed into Steam's top-ten bestsellers. Whether this translates to post-launch success remains to be seen, but it looks to be the year's best hope.

Other titles, like John Carpenter's Toxic Commando and Halloween, don't fill me with much confidence. Neither does the future, either, with one third of triple-A developers suggesting they are working on live-service titles.