Here’s another example where trying to chase the live-service money train has just ended up with a subpar product that people abandon or avoid almost instantly.
Unfortunately I suspect the wrong lessons will be taken away from this as well - e.g. the console/PC gaming market is too fickle, etc.
It’s one of those games where you gotta ask, who asked for this? It seemed like the second game was doing very well. They should have gone the route of Counterstrike and just done and in place upgrade with the same content, but better.
Payday 2 was good for a while, but then it got buried under a mountain of DLC and people slowly stopped playing because of the aggressive monetization. They came out swinging with the same tactics in Payday 3 with only minor content improvements, so people weren’t as motivated to buy the same game again.
Cities: Skylines 2 appears to be going the same route.
To me, this is actually why I’d want a Team Fortress 3 rather than more updates. The wave of cosmetics in some way turned the previous game a bit unplayable.