The conversation around video games in 2025 feels heavier than ever. News cycles are filled with studio shutdowns, mass layoffs, canceled projects, and a strange sense that an industry built on imagination is struggling to imagine its own future. Players sense it. Developers sense it. Even executives—who often appear insulated by spreadsheets—have started acknowledging that something is shifting beneath their feet.
If you’ve been watching the industry closely, you’ve probably asked the same question many fans whisper in frustration: Why are big AAA publishers treating single-player games like an endangered species?
To answer that, we need to walk through the story patiently—following its twists, its mistakes, its economics, and the very human misunderstandings that shape billion-dollar decisions.
This article takes a slow, narrative approach, making sense of the noise without compressing it into bullet points or oversimplified takes. Let’s explore the truth behind one of gaming’s most complicated debates.
The Industry at a Crossroads
Before we dive into why single-player games feel deprioritized, it’s important to understand where the industry currently stands. Many assume gaming is booming more than ever, and in some ways, it is. Globally, the industry still generates over $50 billion annually. People are buying games. People are playing games. The audience hasn’t disappeared.
But growth—real, year-on-year expansion—stalled after 2021.
That stall is what terrifies executives.
Every major company wants to replicate the explosiveness of Fortnite, Roblox, or Steam. These platforms bring in staggering amounts of consistent revenue—revenue that flows daily, not just during launch months. Executives dream of this because it offers what regular games do not: predictability.
When you sell a single-player game, the money comes once. When you run a platform, marketplace, or live-service ecosystem, the money never stops. The mere sight of Fortnite pulling in an estimated $3 billion a year makes business leaders salivate.
They want a slice of the “forever money”—and they want it without having to bet on the risky, unpredictable nature of handcrafted single-player titles.
This desire for infinite revenue is where today’s crisis quietly began.
The Obsession with the “Forever Game”
Imagine being an executive looking at the market in 2025. You see Fortnite thriving, Roblox creating an entire digital economy, and Steam continuously printing money through the 30% cut of every sale.
To an executive who thinks more like a landlord than a creator, these look less like games and more like real-estate empires.
A single-player game is a house someone buys once.
A live-service ecosystem is an apartment complex full of tenants who never move out and pay you every single month.
This is what publishers crave. They don’t want to make a game; they want to own a space in the gaming world where people stay indefinitely. That mindset has twisted the industry’s goals. Instead of producing bold, well-crafted adventures, publishers are trying to create digital real-estate—something that guarantees passive income.
But the uncomfortable truth is this:
There is only one Fortnite.
There is only one Roblox.
There is only one Steam.
And even Epic—owner of Fortnite and Unreal Engine—has not managed to dethrone Steam. That alone shows how unrealistic the dream is.
Yet publishers keep chasing it.
Why Live-Service Games Are So Hard to Copy
On paper, the forever-game model looks easy to replicate: constant content, microtransactions, and an evolving world. But the behind-the-scenes reality is brutal.
Live-service games depend on three dangerous pillars:
- FOMO (fear of missing out)
- Infinite content production
- Retention metrics that punish failure
If players leave—even briefly—the economy collapses. That’s the opposite of single-player games, which only need to satisfy players once to be considered a success.
Destiny 2 shows how taxing this model can be. Even hardcore fans admit the game often feels like a part-time job. Other studios try to mimic this formula, but most underestimate how much labor and money it actually requires. And when a live-service project fails? The crash is immediate and catastrophic.
Concord lasted two weeks.
Babylon’s Fall didn’t survive a year.
Anthem collapsed before it even found its footing.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League barely made it to a handful of updates before its support ended.
What ties these failures together is simple: big publishers underestimate the complexity of building a game that never ends.
You can’t sustain a forever-game unless you understand what players endlessly return for—and you can’t force a single-player studio to suddenly become a live-service studio. The DNA, tools, culture, and workflow are completely different.
And when publishers force the wrong creators into the wrong product, disaster follows.
When Publishers Force Developers to Make Games They Don’t Believe In
Perhaps the most heartbreaking part of gaming in recent years is watching brilliant studios crumble under the pressure to build something they never wanted to create.
Arcane Austin—responsible for the acclaimed Prey—was pushed into making Redfall, a live-service-lite shooter that the team never wanted. The result? A game that felt soulless and unfinished. Seventy percent of the studio left before the game even shipped.
That’s not normal churn. That’s an evacuation.
Rocksteady was revered for the Batman Arkham series—meticulously crafted single-player games. Forcing them onto a live-service Suicide Squad title was like asking a neurosurgeon to build a shopping mall. The skill, passion, and studio identity simply didn’t align.
BioWare nearly died building Anthem, and had to claw its way back just to regain the chance to make story-driven games again.
PlatinumGames—known for tight, polished action—was almost crushed by Babylon’s Fall, another live-service casualty.
None of this happened because these developers suddenly forgot how to make games.
It happened because publishers demanded they make the wrong kind of game.
Sony’s Live-Service Gamble: A Case Study in Overreach
No discussion about the collapse of live-service mania is complete without examining Sony’s massive misstep.
Sony planned 12 live-service games by 2026.
Twelve.
More than half have already been canceled, including early concepts for God of War, Spider-Man, and even The Last of Us. These were potentially some of Sony’s most beloved universes—and they were being reshaped into ongoing multiplayer projects nobody asked for.
To make matters worse, Sony purchased Bungie for $3.6 billion—nearly the cost Disney paid for Star Wars—all because executives believed Destiny’s success could be replicated under their umbrella.
It didn’t work.
As of now, Sony is quietly abandoning the live-service gold rush after repeated failures. Jim Ryan’s departure marked the beginning of that retreat, but the consequences of those decisions still ripple through the company.
Microsoft, Game Pass, and the Subscription Dilemma
While Sony chased live-service, Microsoft pursued a different strategy: subscriptions. Game Pass is their crown jewel, and they need a constant stream of games to keep players subscribed.
Their solution? Buy studios.
Lots of studios.
But the avalanche of acquisitions created another problem—too many teams, not enough management, and not enough focus. The closure of Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks weren’t accidents. They’re symptoms of a company stretched thin.
Game Pass has been great for players, offering incredible value, but it hasn’t been kind to the studios making the games.
The pressure to feed the subscription machine is relentless, especially when single-player games—despite being loved—are expensive and only bring short-term spikes in engagement.
This has left Microsoft in an uncomfortable place: single-player games matter for prestige, but live-service games matter for growth. Balancing both has proven incredibly difficult.
The Rise of AA Studios and the Indie Renaissance
While AAA publishers struggle to chase trends, a quieter revolution is unfolding in the AA and indie scenes.
Games like:
– Lies of P
– Black Myth: Wukong
– Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
– Hollow Knight: Silksong (still anticipated)
These titles feel expensive, ambitious, and fresh—but they’re made with smaller teams, tighter budgets, and often greater creative freedom.
This is where players are flocking.
Why?
Because these games do what single-player games have always done best: tell stories, create worlds, and deliver complete experiences without demanding your life in return.
Meanwhile, AAA budgets have ballooned into the hundreds of millions, making publishers terrified of risk. Smaller studios—leaner, hungrier, and more willing to experiment—are stepping into the space that once belonged to big publishers.
It’s a changing of the guard, even if the industry hasn’t fully acknowledged it yet.
Capcom: The Proof That Single-Player Still Works
While other publishers panicked, Capcom quietly doubled down on something radical:
Make good, polished single-player games that people actually want.
Resident Evil remakes
Devil May Cry 5
Monster Hunter World
Street Fighter 6
Every release is focused, refined, and confident.
And the result?
Capcom’s market cap has grown more than tenfold in a decade. Their profits are consistent. Their brand has never been stronger. They didn’t chase trends—they embraced craft.
Capcom is the living, breathing proof that single-player games are not dead. The problems facing AAA publishers are not about players losing interest—they’re about executives refusing to see what players truly value.
Single-Player Games Aren’t Dying—Executives Just Don’t Understand Them
The idea that single-player games are dying has always come from the top—not from developers, and certainly not from players.
Most gamers want:
– a story with an ending
– a world they can finish
– an experience that respects their time
But a “forever game” thrives only when people are never satisfied. The design is built to keep you wanting, waiting, grinding, and returning.
Executives misinterpret this lack of closure as the ideal model. They see the endless engagement, the cosmetics, the monetization—and assume this is the future.
The truth is far simpler:
People return to single-player games because they’re satisfying.
People quit live-service games because they’re exhausting.
The long-term winner isn’t the game that stretches itself forever—it’s the game that leaves an impact worth remembering.
What the Industry Needs to Realize
If there’s one message this entire discussion builds toward, it’s this:
You don’t need to rule the world to succeed—you just need to make something great.
Fortnite is an anomaly.
Roblox is an anomaly.
Steam is an anomaly.
Trying to replicate anomalies is a recipe for failure.
What the industry desperately needs—now more than ever—is publishers willing to embrace creativity instead of control, satisfaction instead of addiction loops, and art instead of endless monetization funnels.
If a publisher simply commits to making strong single-player experiences, they will make money—not infinite money, not Fortnite money, but meaningful, sustainable revenue that builds trust and longevity.
And ironically, they’ll probably outlive every failed live-service experiment around them.
Final Thoughts
The future of single-player games isn’t bleak. It isn’t over. It isn’t dying. It’s simply caught in the crossfire of an industry obsessed with endless revenue streams and afraid of creative risk.
But players haven’t changed.
Their love for story-driven adventures hasn’t dimmed.
Their desire for meaningful experiences hasn’t disappeared.
The renaissance in indie and AA circles, the quiet strength of companies like Capcom, and the continued backlash against predatory live-service trends all prove the same thing:
Single-player games are not only alive—they’re thriving in spaces where creativity still matters.
The question is whether the biggest publishers will learn the same lesson… or continue chasing a dream that only one company in history has truly achieved.
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