Warframe Creative Director Rebecca Ford Criticizes Destiny 2 Discontinuation and Industry Impact of Pulling Support for Live Service Games
The discontinuation of current development for Bungie's Destiny 2 has been criticized heavily by key figures in the live service genre. Recently, on the Dropped Frames podcast, Warframe's creative director, Rebecca Ford expressed doubt about the move to pull support. This closure occurs amidst speculation that the third installment of Destiny is not currently in active development, leaving the community without a future to look forward to.
Ford was blunt about the numbers and community sentiment regarding the move. She directed viewers to publicly available tracking websites, which demonstrated that the game is extremely viable, despite a slight drop in concurrent daily players from previous years.
I can say for sure that this is a bad decision. Check SteamCharts and you will see it too. It is just a disaster. I do not think there is any world in the universe where such a decision makes sense. Is it possible to simply end a massive undertaking that shook the gaming industry for a decade? Just take it and end it? It seems so when business is involved. I have mentioned before how much we despise it when the business voice becomes the loudest in the meeting room. In our team that voice has been the loudest for a long time but it does not harm our staff and players as much. It is still hard for me to believe this is happening.
The original Destiny set the tone for modern action games and introduced features like colored loot and damage numbers for first person shooters, paving the way for games all around the world. It served as an inspiration for Digital Extremes when they launched Warframe in 2013, which has been up and running for over a decade and stands as an example of live service games with much longerlifespans than Destiny 2.
From an operational point of view, players have recorded the average concurrent daily player base on Steam for Destiny 2 as hovering around 10,000 users throughout its lifespan. For the live service industry, these are very good numbers for a consistentlyprofitable game. Such statistics alone are already sufficient for Bethesda to continue to support Fallout 76 with updates. This move illustrates the increasing gap between business practices and player bases for live service games.
