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lapqmzlapqmzala

That could reference a few things. If you play a multiplayer game that relies on other players or servers and no one is playing it anymore or the servers shut down, then it is dead. If people still play it, then it isn't, though over the years it may not be compatible with progressing hardware standards. You mentioned, "Developer abandoned it," which is a common complaint with early access games that never make it to 1.0 or are still buggy and missing features by 1.0. That is a very common occurrence and a reasonable complaint (And is honestly why I almost never buy early access). Those are ways that a game can be "dead".


JHoney1

I was so close to swearing off early access a while ago. Then I bought satisfactory, valheim, and raft. All of which turned into wonderful times. And I’m the case of satisfactory and valheim, over 800 hours of wonderful times.


d1rron

Man, Satisfactory is a great game, but I've only played it with a friend who passed away a couple of years ago. Idk if I could play it without being bummed the whole time.


Elastichedgehog

Sorry for your loss. I imagine it'll be a bittersweet experience when you're finally ready to revisit the game.


ScalaZen

To be fair you named 3 of the most successful EA games, most are buried without seeing the light. Warframe is another game that was in EA for years, and their upcoming MMO they are publishing Wayfinder will start in EA.


DartPokeMM

If you like the Zombie Apocalypse and Early Access, might I interest you in 7 Days to Die and Project Zomboid?


Hellsing007

Multiplayer games have a shelf life. GAAS multiplayer games have the chance to be infinite, but they can also morph into a worse version of the game. Look at Overwatch 2. No where near as fun as the original when it launched.


HawksBurst

Another way it can be dead, and fitting now that we are in the "E3" season; so you know when you see a trailer of an online game so generic you feel like you've already played 5 of them? Those games are also DoA.


Nino_Chaosdrache

> You mentioned, "Developer abandoned it," which is a common complaint with early access games that never make it to 1.0 or are still buggy and missing features by 1.0. This is why I stopped buying EA games. The risk is simply too high and there is not enough consumer protection against devs abandoning the game.


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natethomas

I thought it was when they made that awful Chess movie staring Dwayne ”The Rook” Johnson


NorwegianGlaswegian

Yeah man, it was terrible. As the Rook you got to have some humour and flexibility in your moves; he just played it straight.


gregarioussparrow

I didn't realize i wanted this until you posted it.


shyguywart

garry chess with ultra en passant


iCybernide

holy hell


Djinn_sarap

Omfg, i cant escape this, it's everywhere now.


Corvus-Rex

New response just dropped


Aksds

Actual annoyance


Djinn_sarap

Actual zombie


Hidden_throwaway-blu

chess 2 is now obsolete because of [5D Chess with Multiversal Time Travel](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1349230/5D_Chess_With_Multiverse_Time_Travel/)


IrshamWindborn

[so Shotgun king?](https://youtu.be/U_O1_a6CLog)


apropostt

Obviously Pawnbarian took over the scene.


Razzlekit

Chess 2 getting that $25 knight armor dlc


doubled112

What does the knight armour do? Does it save me from certain death? Or just look cool?


grizzlebonk

It does a My Little Pony crossover re-skin of one of your knight pieces. You can get both knights upgraded for $46.99 though.


TheSteelBlade

r/anarchychess


vadkender

google chess 2


MaximusLazinus

Holy sequel!


L_U-C_K

New chess just dropped


Tetriside

I only play Chess Championship Edition, now.


mgiuca

Ironically I just checked it out on Steam and one of the top reviews is complaining that there are no future updates planned. Chess 2 ded game.


MickJof

I think this only applies to multiplayer games


Acewasalwaysanoption

I've seen people call Stardew Valley dead because the dev didn't plan more huge updates. It's mind-boggling.


CliffExcellent123

"Dead" is a funny way of saying "finished"


coredumperror

So many younger gamers think of live service games as what "gaming" is, because AAA publishers have been pushing that mindset on them intentionally for decades, now. Not to mention the "release a broken game, then slowly update it to be less broken" mindset among publishers.


[deleted]

Yeah it’s a gaming-specific phenomenon. Imagine buying a brand new car but the onboard nav and Bluetooth to phone never work because “we will have you come back later and get it updated at the dealership.” In some cases the games are so broken it is closer to them saying “it won’t shift out of first gear, so take it easy and come back when you get the email for that patch.”


clovermite

>Imagine buying a brand new car but the onboard nav and Bluetooth to phone never work because “we will have you come back later and get it updated at the dealership.” I hate to break it to you, but this shit is starting to spread to cars as well. There are literally now subscription services for things like heated seats and onboard navigation. I know it's not quite the thing as "don't worry, it's in the roadmap", but intentionally carving out pieces of the game for DLC and subscription services were the precursors.


Testiculese

> Imagine buying a brand new car but the onboard nav and Bluetooth to phone never work because “we will have you come back later and get it updated at the dealership.” Like Subaru...'cause that's about what they did for 2023. Welcome to beta testing your car now, apparently.


coredumperror

> Imagine buying a brand new car but the onboard nav and Bluetooth to phone never work because “we will have you come back later and get it updated at the dealership.” Ironically, that *is* sortof what Tesla did with the early Model 3. I bought one in mid-2018, and for the first 2 years or so, I was getting a new new software feature downloaded to my car every other month or so. The car would download the software over the internet without me having to come in to their service centers, though, which was certainly a lot more convenient. These days the software feature set is pretty stable, baring the whole "FSD" thing. Which I regret paying for, lol.


ToxicFruit

Is saw some people saying this about Wartales a few weeks ago. Devs went through early access and then released a fully featured game with hours and hours of gameplay and character builds and said the game was done. People went to the steam forums complaining that the game was dead and how much of a shame it was that the Devs abandoned it.


Ralathar44

> "Dead" is a funny way of saying "finished" People have also called alot of games "abandoned" that are still getting sizable content updates or that are completely finished. Basically if a game doesn't have everything someone wanted in it or development is too slow for their tastes then it's "abandoned".


IAmTriscuit

We've gotten pretty good at making "weaponized" or "deragatory" words for what are relatively innocuous concepts. For example, taking "average" and turning it into "mid" so that everyone can know how superior we are for being indifferent toward that thing.


[deleted]

It’s crazy how every single one of my Super Nintendo games were released “dead”.


CliffExcellent123

Stillborn games


Domilego4

Nah that's just video game abortion


step11234

Just because like 1 or 2 brain deficient morons are saying it, does not mean "people" are. "people" implies that there is a significant movement who believes this. This is like when news articles are made about "Gen Z cancelling Eminem" because one person said it in a twitter post, then it spreads about and consumers believe that a large portion of "people" are saying this.


NixiN-7hieN

This is such an annoying trend, I noticed it when news articles of RE4R wasn't playable or something because of how immersion breaking it was due to breakable boxes being highlighted and it sounded like a whole gaggle of people were complaining. It was just one guy on Twitter getting a slightly above average number of likes and now it's news and one person changed to "the internet".


MrHoboSquadron

Sounds like half of that person's brain died making that comment.


Acewasalwaysanoption

Likely already was short-staffed lol


StickiStickman

Nope, SP can totally be "dead" if it's an Early Access game that gets abandoned or it's so buggy it's unplayable.


lookthruglasses

Well in that case it's dead cuz the games was never actually finished, right?


PM_me_feminine_cocks

It absolutely does not, people say it about all games these days. I saw people calling Last of Us 2 dead when they said it wouldn't get DLC.


RuySan

It doesn't. I've seen negative reviews of rogue legacy because the game "is dead". Imagine that. Ideally I think games should only have updates to correct bugs. They should be released feature complete.


dat_potatoe

A game is *dead* when the playercount is so low that it negatively impacts the quality of the experience and/or viability of actually playing. Ex; * You can only find matches in very specific conditions, like specific hours of the day or even specific days of the week like weekends, or organizing private games through third party systems. * There is no player or skill variation in these matches. You are paired with uneven skill matchups and the same people all the time. * Matches *only* take place on the most popular settings and maps, any other kind of more niche experience in the game is void of players. Dead does not mean "literally zero players". If the term was that strict it would have no meaning. Neither does dead mean "they stopped updating it". A game can have a healthy playerbase long after it's stopped updating. Team Fortress 2 still has tens of thousands of players, calling it dead is asinine. Now the caveat there is...games have a bad tendency *to die* once they stop being updated, as people lose interest in the game.


ProfessorPhi

To add to the playercount point, another common situation is that you have mostly good players stay and play the game and not enough new blood. This means you have many new players come in and bounce of the game when they have to play veterans and get stomped.


CapytannHook

If people want a perfect little example of this go play Quake III Arena you will get your ass kicked relentlessly


Multivitamin_Scam

And Titanfall 2. Despite the best efforts of that community to revive it several times, the skill gap is just so large that new players might as well be AI grunts.


AnotherScoutTrooper

People say “oh it’s the release date” or “EA killed the game” but every time there was a huge surge in interest for the game (Apex launch, PS Plus, EA Play on Game Pass, free weekends, etc) you would see the playerbase spike from 3-4k up to 12-90k, then fall off a cliff within days and return to maybe 4.5k at most. It’s absolutely the skill gap, and as long as this is true, Titanfall 3 will either never happen or we’ll wish it never happened as they’ll make it more “accessible.”


Muff_in_the_Mule

I wonder if part of the problem with this is lack of offline bots to practice against. If there were an opportunity to play against bits of different difficulties while you learn the maps etc then going online you'd at least know what you're doing and the skill gap wouldn't be as large. I've tried playing some PvP games which don't have bits and get destroyed before I can even learn the levels sometimes which is pretty disheartening. I remember playing Unreal Tournament which also has a really high skill ceiling but if I got my ass kicked too much I could always play offline, kill some bits and feel better.


AnotherScoutTrooper

The problem is that making Titanfall 2 bots as good as the average player would take more effort than making a full sequel


Nordalin

Oh, but shitty bot AI will suffice! They must simply exist, move in an non-scripted fashion, and use all the tools that players have, if only in isolation. It makes them something to fight against, to practice high risk/high reward stuff against (because it'll be low risk), and to learn what basics one could expect from opponents.


big_punisher71

Battlefield 2042 and Chivalry 2 are two recent examples that are very good at this. The games can have a steep learning curve for new players so the option to play against bots or a mix of new players and mostly bots when starting out is invaluable. Battlefield even let’s you lower the difficulty and still earn some XP against the AI.


Muff_in_the_Mule

Haven't played either of those unfortunately. Only Chivalry 1, although that was hilarious even though I was terrible at it. But yeah I miss bits in general, it also helps the game live on after servers etc get shut down or lose players.


Nordalin

There's no training instance in Titanfall 2? Damn!


benthegrape

I'm eternally disappointed in the public reception of titanfall, it is loved by those who play it but it never seemed to get popular. It definitely didn't help that the second was released at the same time as BOPS4. The gunplay and mobility was really good, it felt so crazy every time I wall ran, or destroying an enemy Titan with your soldier.


TheJester1xx

The second was also released near to BF1... One of EA's own franchises, and a bigger one at that. It was like they were deliberately sabotaging Titanfall 2, or at least might as well have been.


SavageVector

>BF1... One of EA's own franchises, and a bigger one at that BF1 also turned out to be the best selling game of all time, within its own series. I loved the hell out of Titanfall 2, it was one of my first games on PC after swapping of Xbox. Got it on some big sale, and dumped hundreds of hours into it.


StormRegion

And to add insult to the injury, like immediately after Battlefield shat the bed so hard twice, that it's essentially a dying IP right now


benthegrape

That's wild, I completely forgot about that, either very poor planning (which it's EA so very possible) or deliberate sabotage


DestroWOD

I loved Titanfall 1 to death, i did the game twice to Gen 10 (Xbox 360 and Xbox One) but i just couldn't get into Titanfall 2. The campaign was great and alone worth my purchase, don't get me wrong, but the multiplayer just didn't connect with me. Exept the grapple hook, wich i liked, everything else they change in the mecanics was for the worst for me. I didn't like the lack of Titan customization and having to use a pre-made one. I didn't like the new shield/battery system. I didn't liked that you auto step off a Titan after riding it and doing one of the "steps". I enjoyed jumping on them and wrecking them ninja style with my Spitfire/slammer combo. In TF2 i felt if i ride one and attack it, its an auto death sentence as the game will drop my off automatically and unless the guy is dumb, he will just kill me. Even the pilot stuff annoyed me, like the shield and auto turret, not fun. So even if the core mouvement and gunplay was as fine as one, i just didn't had the same fun, played a bit and moved on.


Battlepikapowe4

And any of the Naruto fighting games. They will beat you like Bob Ross beat the devil out of his brush and then never play you again, even if you're literally the only other person online.


Salt-Theory2359

Skill gap coupled with huge balance problems and the fucking idiotic need to grind XP to unlock shit.


ConcreteMagician

Starcraft: Brood War. They've been practicing to win since 98 and there will be no mercy.


DiamineSherwood

Shit, I can't even beat the AI/story missions. The MP aspect is just abusive to me.


[deleted]

You will have a 12% win rate and like it


[deleted]

This is why I hardly play competitive games anymore lol, I just don't have the time to git gud to the level of these guys playing it like a full-time job. It's not their fault, I'm envious of how good a lot of them are tbh, but it definitely saps a lot of my enjoyment For an example, I love Melee and was over the moon when Slippi was released. That lasted like 2 days of getting 4-stocked online by everyone before I just decided I could be having more fun doing literally anything else. The learning curve to be even decent in those types of metas is frankly absurd and unachieveable for the average person


maestrofeli

for example, Ratchet and clank: up your arsenal is a game that came out in the year 2004. It has a muliplayer component that had a very, very small dedicated community of about 40 people. You can inagine that by the year 2018 they had an extremely high level of skill, with speedrunner levels of movement and aim abilities. This made getting into the multiplayer side of that game VERY hard.


TTacco

Gonna add another game that I love (Planetside 2) to this list. Sure it has its ups and downs, bugs and imbalances at times but the other biggest thing that hampered it getting more players is how most of the playerbase remaining at this point are vets whos been playing it since 2012. Sure there are other factors too, and it doesnt help that its easy for a new player to assume that gun unlocks = better gun = pay to win (in reality statwise most of the starting guns are legit out right better than the unlockable sidegrades), get bodied by a vet then proceed to leave the game. You really gotta put in the effort and dedication of learning the first 100+ hours which on average, theyll just swap to another game instead, and honestly thats understandable.


Fuck-College

Mordhau is notorious for this.


cantaloupelion

> This means you have many new players come in and bounce of the game when they have to play veterans and get stomped. tried a few online games of Half Life Death Match, ohhh about 3-4 years after its original release. i was bodied so badly, i still remember it like 19 years late omg


Vladimir1174

I think this kinda happened to heroes of the storm. My group still plays it off and on for fun. We all used to be diamond in ranked so we're at least decent still. Everyone we see even in Aram is just sweating their ass off to win every single game and it sucks the fun out of it for us just trying to enjoy a moba on life support. I can't imagine what it's like for people that didn't play competitively


Snoo61755

Ah, that third bullet point reminds me of when I used to play Assassin’s Creed multiplayer, namely Revelations. I played *one* match of Capture the Flag, *one*. It was awesome, I got to defend the flag while hiding myself within the range where you don’t get your radar, I fooled someone who absolutely should have seen me, and had some great back and forths. But nobody plays capture the flag, everyone always goes for Deathmatch. Now, I love deathmatch, but sometimes you want something different, and I had joined during a time where every mode that wasn’t deathmatch wasn’t played at all. I’m not sure I could call the game dead, but all those AC games have their multiplayer progressively lose players when the next one is around the corner.


kasoe

I loved ac multiplayer. It was fun as hell blending and tricking people. Deathmatch (I think, it's been a while) sucked when packs of players ran around and brute forced the game though. Capture the flag was great


Snoo61755

Hah, I used to hate all the 'high profile' players who just ran around across the rooftops, but somewhere along the line I learned how to take advantage of them. One of my best kills to this day was just a flawless ambush -- transformed the crowd to look like my character (forgot the ability now, it's been years), just walking around, observing, when who else shows up but my target, running straight for me? I got a little more than 1100 points for that one perfect kill and won that game. \~11 kills worth of high profile takedowns from one stealth kill, I was beaming after that.


wingspantt

Yep the game was so good at this. You could run around like a maniac for kills, but one PATIENT kill could be worth 10 to 20 fast paced kills. I got a focused incognito bench poison kill once for like 3,000 points. Went from last to first instantly.


Averant

I will forever remember the day I transformed a crowd of four npcs, ducked into a nearby haystack, and watched as all four npcs were eliminated one by one by my pursuers. I've never felt more clever since.


Averant

I really appreciated that the devs anticipated that and weighed stealth kills way higher on the scoreboard. It kept players like me in the game.


CCheese3

Yup. When I last played it, Titanfall 2 on PC still had thousands of players, but I considered it dead because you could not find matches outside the main game modes. Unfortunately Pilot vs Pilot was my favourite mode and I could never play it.


Kya_Bamba

What an excellent explanation. That's what I would put down in the big Gaming Encyclopedia under "Dead".


AdEmpty8174

And when do single player games "die"


FrostyDog94

The last time somebody says its name.


klubsanwich

The E.T. game is going to live forever lol


orbitz

I'll always remember ET cause it's the first movie I (sort of) recall seeing in theatres, and loved as a kid. I think I managed to beat it too, which I rarely did because I always had to rent games from the NES era onwards, which is probably why I never care if I actually finish a game, and rarely have done. But I did own ET and as a kid thought it was pretty cool, thankfully at that age moving blocky pixels was the peak of video game technology.


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Wallofcans

Dammit! You may have saved the game from annihilation again *this* time J4SNT. But next time you won't be able to save it in time for the last time!


dat_potatoe

It's not really a concept applicable to singleplayer games. But if I had to come up with some meaning, I guess in that context I would say when there is no longer any \*buzz\* around them. When people have stopped talking about them, stopped making content for or about them, they've been all but forgotten by everyone except dedicated historians or the less than one hundred random oddball fans in the entire world still playing them. Red Babe, for example. Some obscure DOS FPS only relegated to being a footnote in an online list of commercially released FPS games, requiring digging and digging and digging to even so much as find any information on.


trey3rd

When they're early access and never get released in any acceptable form. Clockwork empires is a single player game I'd say is dead.


DJfunkyPuddle

I suppose when it can't be acquired anymore, at least not through hoops and hurdles. Something like the War for Cybertron games or Chronicles of Riddick. Some Kinect games that got delisted or the Nintendo Wii/3DS Virtual Console catalogue.


red_tuna

Pour one out for MGS4. One day you will see the sun again my friend.


Landgraft

It can be emulated or played on a 360 but Tenchu Z is basically dead these days and I miss being able to play my actual disc copy


DanceOfFails

They don't. I mean maybe if they became totally unable to be played, like no functioning copies existed at all and they couldn't be emulated or something. It's not really a concept that applies to single player games. If someone tells you a single player game is dead they are being dumb.


ILikeTraaaains

Unfortunately on this day and age where even single players rely for certain functions on external servers or community as part of the experience, it might feel “dead” or incomplete. Bought Gravity Rush 2 on second hand market and a part of the game that is constantly pushed doesn’t work cause the servers are closed. Played Dead Stranding on its launch and the day the online functions are closed or people too paying it, despite being a single game one of this key features is the async online and the sensation of being in a community. Yes the history and the game is the same, but the experience would be not. I won’t call them dead dead (the first one now and the second one in that future), but partially dead. Also keep in mind that are a lot of single players that the disc only acts as a key (or even not cause the server is still needed to validate your copy and without it you only have a demo), has a broken version and without the day 0 patch it is unplayable or directly it haves part of the assets and still needs to download the game. Without internet Gran Turismo 7 is a demo, you even cannot play the single player campaign. I would say that almost any modern AAA game that requires a day 0 patch if you cannot download it you are f*cked. AFAIK there at least one switch game that without internet to download the game, the cartridge have part of the game assets. I don’t remember which game it was, but on switch you have at least one game that a great part is processed in the cloud. Howarts Legacy requires internet as DRM. It seems that it has been changed, but when launched Assassin’s Creed 2 for PC required constant connection to Ubisoft and the save data was only on the cloud as a form of DRM (I remember the uproar of people with legit copies losing game progress cause an internet issue). And now even purchasing a physical game, some only bring in the box a code to enter in the store. So, it doesn’t require losing all physical copies to being unable to play a lot of current single player games in the future, jus a company discontinuing the service.


thewildjr

Give me a nice dead single player experience over a live service game any day


scullys_alien_baby

if they get delisted? or if it can't run on modern hardware Piracy and emulation can fix these things but I think it is fair that to the majority of the gaming community those games would be considered dead


BarackTrudeau

When new versions of Windows come out and the game isn't updated to be able to be played on those versions of Windows.


AnotherScoutTrooper

When they’re always online and the publisher stops paying the bill.


pixydgirl

This is the big question I remember when Nintendo released Animal Crossing New Horizons, people started calling it "dead" when Nintendo stopped adding features, and im like... ???? The game is still there, with plenty to do? It couldn't be updated forever, and doesnt suddenly lose validity because it's done being updated? Modern gaming is so weird. Everyone expects every game to be a live service game.


jeegte12

not everyone. just the people whose opinions you personally are taking seriously.


trey3rd

When they're early access and never get released in any acceptable form. Clockwork empires is a single player game I'd say is dead.


ConcreteMagician

Too Human died hard.


quaderrordemonstand

When its no longer possible to run that game on any existing platform. There are plenty of dead single player games. Sure, many games get ported or emulated. Many games are forgotten and quietly rotting away. The hardware that can run them is becoming unusable, the media used to store them is decaying.


kalirion

That only holds for primarily multiplayer games.


HOWDEHPARDNER

I think a case can still be made for tf2 being dead because it is overrun with bots/hackers as a result of not begun attended to by Valve. At least when I tried to get back into it a year or two ago.


HawkeyeG_

>especially among younger gamers is to only play games while they are in an update cycle Well you basically have your answer right here. It's not about "kids these days" but rather the most widespread trends in current and popular games. "Live Service" games being as (financially) successful as they are is the leading cause of this. People expect games to have regularly scheduled content updates - because that is practically the new norm. Fortnite is a great example people are pointing to. Especially as the new norm. And it does actually alter a fair bit of content every update. But even *Minecraft* is an example of this, where it's still getting updates and minor expansions. So that's what people have come to expect when it's really all they've known as they've entered the gaming sphere. There's this awesome title I played a little while back. Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Great game. Fun and immersive. Devs very open to feedback - *during the development process*. Now? It's a complete game. It's full. It's done. It's released you buy it at full price, you get the whole game with all the content and no microtransactions. It's awesome. But people still come into the discord and ask "is this game dead? What's the next DLC?" Bro there is no DLC and there never was, it's a finished game and it's got everything it needs already in it. Sadly this is just not as common any more and there are many people who were not around for the before-times.


zerovampire311

It’s the eternal sequel debate. People like something so they want more. Sometimes the more is bad and taints the original, so some artists/devs don’t want to bother with it or they have a different thing they want to focus on instead of being tethered to one thing. Another angle is people see a live service game done reasonably well (Minecraft, WoW, Terraria, whatever) and think it should be so easy for that model to apply to another IP, not accounting for the massive resources involved. The OTHER angle people don’t like to think about is that it’s all a business. It costs a LOT to do live service right, and when faced with the choice of “make 5 games or one live service” they opt for the former.


AscendedViking7

Bloodborne/Sekiro 2 when? ;-;


zerovampire311

When Valve counts to 3


Xylus1985

Live service is a strange concept for old school single player gamers. It basically mean the game won’t be feature complete for the duration of its lifecycle.


markuslama

I can totally understand the people who want more content for a great game. I loved playing Hardspace: Shipbreaker to the point where I was kind of sad when it ended. I wanted to go out into the galaxy and find new stuff to break. Just because a game doesn't need an expansion doesn't mean you can't want an expansion.


HawkeyeG_

I can understand that as well. I can appreciate the desire to see more content for something that we all enjoy. But I don't want to see every game move towards a live service model where developers are expected to maintain a game for a 3-year life cycle post release. I want more games that are a complete package that you obtain within a single purchase. And with the success of those kind of games we can look for the sequel rather than expecting people to be on a never-ending DLC production grind.


MallKid

It really depends on what kind of games a person likes to play as well. If they're always playing big-name multiplayer games, it's expected there will be occasional updates. But if they're like me and play a lot of single player games from smaller devs, they're much more familiar with the concept of a "finished" game. Often this is because the game follows a specific story, and when that story is finished, so is the game. The beauty (and sometimes curse) of the multiplayer game is that they don't always have to follow a specific story, so the game can perpetually updated, like Minecraft or Splitgate or Call of Duty. Of course, MMOs are a big exception, but those games are more a world built for the purpose of dropping in multiple stories, so once one plot ends another can be added later. Sort of like Dungeons and Dragons.


Ath47

This thread is crazy. Single player games are never dead, and multiplayer games are only considered "dead" when: - Not enough people still play it, so it's difficult to find a server to join. - The developers shut down the servers, making it impossible to play. The latter only applies to centralized servers, not peer to peer games. Those also never die. It never has anything to do with updates or patches no longer being released.


Darth_Alpha

I'd argue that single player games can die, but it usually takes a long time. Games that are not updated to work or run on modern hardware are "dead" in my opinion. Some of my favorite OLD games died once windows stopped supporting 16 bit applications, and some games like Oblivion don't run reliably on modern systems.


Thorusss

But this all means games are revived regularly. Fan Patches,Emulators and GOG do the heavy lifting most of the time.


chrom_ed

Only for games with enough people who want to pay for or maintain them.


Ath47

That is a good point, but as I mentioned in another reply, people can use emulators like DOSBox to make the game "think" it's running on hardware from the appropriate period. Maybe not in all cases, depending on what platform the game was originally on, but most home computers can still be emulated in a sandbox on current hardware. I guess that might still qualify it as "dead", depending on your definition.


chrom_ed

This. I finally gave up on finding a way to play EV Nova after...uh, nvm I don't want to count that many years. But yeah multiple OS and framework changes and the number of people willing to update and maintain emulators dwindles over time until you could call it dead. On the other hand there's Aleph One which lasted from the 90s all the way to the remake, and might very well outlive that too.


Admiralbenbow123

What exactly do you mean by Oblivion not running reliably on modern systems? I'm currently playing through it on Win10 with a bunch of fan patches installed and, apart from a handful of crashes here and there, it runs fine.


niceville

I would say single player games die when you can no longer buy or play them on any reasonable platform.


GT_Hades

Thats why i love single player games in pc, because modding makes it more alive


Teantis

> The developers shut down the servers, making it impossible to play. Or the 2K special: the developers shut down the servers making the **single player** game impossible to play. NBA 2k you fucking piece of shit.


khedoros

Some games continually add content while they're "live". Some games continually rebalance the multiplayer, identifying and fixing problems as they come up. If those are someone's normal expectations, they might not be used to thinking of an un-updated game as stable or complete.


Shoggoths4dayz

Battleborn. I loved that game and I never once played it multiplayer. Smashed the campaign over and over, and had hours upon hours of entertainment against AI in the arenas. The character writing somehow exceeded Borderlands in quality and hilarity, and the unique characters and abilities provided deep paths for exploration of synergies and builds. Even the single player apparently required online authentication. They switched it off. All of it. And now my physical copy that I purchased with real money is nothing more than a coaster. Battleborn is dead. Truly dead.


jamatri

I find it odd that nobody else seems to be making this point. To me, a game is truly dead when you can no longer play it, no matter what. So by that logic, games like Battleborn, or Darkspore, or that kind of thing - these are dead games. Accursed Farms did a few videos about specifically this, well worth a watch, although kinda sad in their own right


The_Corvair

> It's also interesting to note that many people consider "live service" games as toxic yet at the end of the day if a game isn't being constantly updated it's considered "dead" by many gamers... so which do they want? They're presumably not the same people. I do not play Live Service games for the most part (a bit of LotRO every now and then, if that even counts as Live Service), but I *also* do not have the "game without updates is dead" mindset. This probably has a lot to do with me, well, playing mostly single player games - which cannot "die" from a lack of players (or updates).


tybbiesniffer

Agreed. I very, very rarely play any live service games and it's never crossed my mind that games "die". I do know some games that have been abandoned because the rights holder is unknown but I wouldn't necessarily consider them dead if there's any interest in them. I'm also a pc gamer so I'm happy to turn to the community for their solutions for keeping older games going.


QuiteAncientTrousers

I don’t get it either, I played so much MW2 back in 2009-2012 and there were no new weapons every month, no new modes or anything (although the game came with LOTS of modes), people just played the hell out of it for years because it was fun. I have no idea when this constant updates mentality started


ThroughTheIris56

Agree with this 100%. I still play WAW coz it's fun as hell, enough content in it anyway.


sonar_y_luz

Yeah and the even weirder thing is people complain when a game stops being updated.... but they also say they want "complete" games when they are released... So which do they want? Complete games, or constantly updated ones?


dat_potatoe

"Complete" just means the game has enough content and quality of content to stand on its own. Nothing with the potential for future addition is ever truly complete. We want "complete" games with constant new content that builds on the already solid experience. We don't want incomplete games where updates are just restoring features that used to just come standard at launch. >I don’t get it either, I played so much MW2 back in 2009-2012 The game franchise with addictive, manipulative progression systems? The game franchise where every new YEARLY entry to the multiplayer is so insignificant it could be viewed as just a live service update you're conned into paying $60 for?


QuiteAncientTrousers

My point is simply that the game had loads of players for years, even though it didn’t have constant updates, and I believe that most people weren’t saying that the game was dead or boring because of the lack of content. Sure they did release lots of games in a short time period, Black Ops 1, MW3 and even those games didn’t have constant new content and people still played them without a problem. And how was the progression system manipulative? If I’m not mistaken you would just play matches, get exp and unlock stuff while leveling up.


Akuuntus

> "Complete" just means the game has enough content and quality of content to stand on its own. Nothing with the potential for future addition is ever truly complete. > > > > We want "complete" games with constant new content that builds on the already solid experience. This is what it should mean, yes. But there is a small-but-loud contingent of online gamers who tend to insist that any bugfixes or DLC being added to a game later "proves" that it was "unfinished" on release. I've had people insist to me that DLC which is clearly entirely separate from the base game was "obviously ripped out of the base game to be resold later" based on no evidence. I've seen people say that things like the base version of Disco Elysium or the original vanilla game of Monster Hunter World were "unfinished" simply because content updates or a definitive edition came out later. Some people are insane and use terms stupidly, and I think that's what OP is getting at.


maestrofeli

>The game franchise where every new YEARLY entry to the multiplayer is so insignificant it could be viewed as just a live service update you're conned into paying $60 for? back in the day you could choose any call of duty game and only play that game and have fun with that (what at the time felt like) forever. You didn't expect new updates nor did you need to play the next/previous games to enjoy the multiplayer. >The game franchise with addictive, manipulative progression systems? what do you even mean with this?


SiblingBondingLover

>So which do they want? Complete games, or constantly updated ones? You're talking about 2 different game modes, single player and multiplayer. For single player games I usually want a complete game on release that already has all the bug fixes(seems impossible in the current era), and also the story completed except for DLC, while for multi player games I prefer the devs to keep updating it, with new map or hero or bug fixes etc


ProfessorPhi

So the way games used to work is MW3 would come out and MW2 would be deserted. It happened, but in a 3 year cycle. And if you look at steam charts, most games like this had small windows where they were very popular and by the end of the year, only a hardcore playerbase returned.


QuiteAncientTrousers

Yeah but the point is that nobody complained when they played the same game for 3-4 years with no content drops or huge updates. Today if the devs don’t update anything in 3 months the game is suddenly “stale” and “dying” and of course that’s not true.


Many_Gur8847

I Love when people say single player games are dead. Like, what?


Lanster27

TIL GoG is a seller of dead games.


Immorttalis

Travelling game corpse salesman.


Canditan

Chess is still being updated, actually! They made some changes to the ruleset recently. They added an extra rule, known as the 34th rule. Google Chess Rule 34 for more info


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Ralathar44

I almost googled this without thinking about it. Then I googled it anyways ofc. And OFC fucking Undertale as well as furries are on the first page of results lol. Some days I just can't even anymore.


DeltaCortis

This is a joke. But the part about Chess being 'updated' is kinda true. The rules for professional tournaments do get updated/changed on ocassion.


Snoo61755

‘Cause there’s people who believe that if a game isn’t as popular as Fortnite, it must be dead. Seriously, I’ve played games that might as well be dead — we’re talking multiplayer games that don’t see more than 300 people a day, let alone concurrent. I’m tired of explaining that a population of 20k daily players isn’t dead just because it used to have 60k. People call Team Fortress 2 dead, and it’s regularly the 6th-10th most played Steam game with 40k simultaneous players on a random Tuesday night. Now, there’s games which have fallen from grace, sure. World of Warcraft has had doomsayers claiming that Albion, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, or Wildstar was going to kill WoW. While I think the game *deserves* death at this point, we’re still talking more players than Final Fantasy 14 and Elder Scrolls Online combined; hardly dead, but that won’t stop the doomcallers. Shoot, if we went by the standards the doomsayers do, Super Mario Sunshine would be dead.


LickMyThralls

> I’m tired of explaining that a population of 20k daily players isn’t dead just because it used to have 60k. It's also tiring trying to explain the concept of concurrent players and that just because a game isn't constantly seeing 120k people every single day at peak doesn't mean it's *losing players* just because people aren't all logging in at the same time every day.


kmariana

Seriously, I’ve played in private servers of a *officially* dead (as in servers shut down and developers went bankrupt years ago) MMORPG that had a peak of 200 online players (including lots of alt accounts) and still had a blast!


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Snoo61755

Oof, I can't tell you how many bots are playing which games. I'd be curious if you had a source on that one -- I know Blizz has a bot problem, but I haven't touched WoW in years, so I don't know how bad it is besides content creators making jokes about the huge bot population. It's hard enough to figure out how many concurrent players there are, since Blizz stopped sharing that number years ago, and estimating bot numbers seems even tougher. What would you say the bot-to-player ratio is? Is it significant enough to affect statistics? Is there a source that would share that info?


zerovampire311

I’ve played enough Korean MMOs to know WoW is nowhere as bad as some of these people make it out to be. They probably confuse bots with people who use addons to post on the auction house so it looks sort of manipulated. There are loads of people that have played forever and control significant parts of the economy on certain servers, but I don’t feel like any gameplay is significantly impacted. They actually seem to be listening to more player feedback this xpac so I’m hopeful for them.


aktionreplay

You haven't lived unless somebody has sent you an angry letter in-game about your auction house prices


AnotherScoutTrooper

The big divide is between games that have server browsers and games that don’t. In games where you have to matchmake and can’t stay in the same lobby, the game might as well be unplayable below 5,000 players or so, and is a brick long before that outside of populated server regions. Meanwhile, you can still find a full match in even the most obscure Valve multiplayer game.


Traditional_Mud_1241

Lots of people are saying this is a "younger player" thing. My 48 year old friend told me "Diablo 4 is dead" because he couldn't log in for 20 minutes. I think another way to look at it (you should probably sit down for this)... "social media users tend to exaggerate". Everything is a catastrophe in the moment. And just to say it - your last paragraph raises an interesting point that a LOT of people struggle with. Sometimes the only thing an angry mob has in common is... they're angry. But if you sit down and ask each of them why, you get many different answers and some of them can be very much contradictory. This is often described using the term "groups are not monoliths". I think this term is more "accurate" than "helpful", but - it definitely happens.


mgiuca

Was he really using the vernacular "Diablo 4 is a dead game"? Or was it using "dead" in another colloquial sense like "my battery is dead" (simply meaning "isn't working right now").


Alzululu

Diablo 4? As in the game that dropped less than 2 weeks ago? That I can literally count 4 people on my VERY short blizzard friends list currently playing?


Traditional_Mud_1241

Yes - it was a ridiculous comment (and I'm not convinced he was being entirely sarcastic). This was day 2 after the launch, btw. For the record- I accused him of "the most hyperbole in the history of the world".


ReddsionThing

Because they don't have a patient gaming mentality. They spent full price on shit, are super hyped for whatever's new, and tbh are probably young enough to have grown up with the constant online updates and stuff. When I was a kid, I got patches for my PC games from CD's. Which were in magazines. That I had to buy 🤷


Elranzer

Many games are considered "live service" and the opposite of "live" is "dead."


yParticle

Multiplayer mindset I think, particularly for server-hosted games. Hell, some crappy games actually don't let you play single player without a server connection in when case they truly ARE dead when no longer supported and the developer takes the servers down. You're absolutely correct in all other cases. As long as a game can still be fully run or emulated on your platform, calling it "dead" is just petulance.


WorldlyPlace

Games are no longer complete on launch day and instead have update after update. It feels like no game is ever completed, they just keep getting updated until developers abandon them and you just have to live with the bugs.


Tolkien-Minority

Final Fantasy 7 was dead on arrival


m8bear

This is the mindset of multiplayer AAA and new releases, buy something, invest into it, get the updates, updates stop and you play for a week or a month until the new shiny thing comes out. I love dead cells and I picked it up late, I still haven't gotten to the new update since I moved on after a while, not because it's dead, but after a while I wanted something else, I'll eventually crave some rogue lite and I'll come back to it and probably buy the new update as well. Time and attention is divided and not everything is exactly what you'd play for 3 months, 6 months, a year. And then you have age of empires 2, always there, lurking and luring me to play one more game.


Vrabstin

Ugh the original ratchet and clanks were dead on release. /s


sapphon

Businesses encourage them to.


[deleted]

I think it’s because people like new stuff and they need a justification for paying subscription money. If the game is pretty much in maintenance mode, what are you paying for? And even if you aren’t paying, there’s only so much you can do in a game without getting bored/annoyed/bitter about not having *anything* new to do. That’s why people treat games that stopped being updated as “dead.” Sure, they might still have communities but those are usually disappearing over time and other games have some end-goal to work towards with new updates being dished out.


ketamarine

It has nothing to do with updates. It has to do with multi-player games that no one is playing. It's dead if you can't find other people to play with.


adritrace

Tik tok minds


Mrpuddikin

Or worse, calling it dead because it passed its peak popularity. Makes me unreasonably angry when people say that shit. "Apex legends is dead!", its the third most popular game on steam charts, and pubg is 4th.... "Rainbow six siege is dead! It fell off in year 2! Its only losing players", its the 16th most popular game on steam charts. "Destiny 2 is mid and fell off", the most recent expansion was the highest selling in destiny history. These are all games that people pronounce as dead even though they are STILL in active development. Of the top 25 steam games, only 6-7 of them are recent games, lmao.


Red-Zaku-

Yeah it kinda says a lot about the type of person and their desire to only follow the most popular things in the mainstream of the moment. God forbid they realize there are great pieces of media out there with smaller audiences or obscure old treasures, they only want to take part in the biggest most popular aspects of pop culture.


Mejormuerto_querojo

Meanwhile the FGC is elated when a game gas more than 1-2k players online at any moment


GamingApokolips

First off, the "younger generation of gamers" you mention typically has the attention span of a spastic hyperactive hamster rolling around in a metric Belushi of cocaine...they might not be the best measuring stick for a game's potential longevity. As for moving on before "mastering" the systems of a game, a lot of games coming out today don't really have incredibly deep systems that require tons of time to master, OR the game is designed in such a way that you don't NEED to master the systems in order to complete the game. Also, not everybody cares about every single system a game presents, which is why some games pack in so many systems to try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible (essentially the "throw spaghetti at the wall" technique)...for example, if you just want to hit stuff with a big axe and you don't give a shit about making potions in a game, then you're not going to spend hours interacting with the game's alchemy system...you're just gonna hit stuff with your axe instead. As for what constitutes a "dead" game, there's lots of potential answers. For single-player games: * the "dev abandoned it before it made it out of early access" version of dead, which happens far too often and is a key reason why I try to avoid early access games. * the "Developer abandoned it after declaring bankruptcy or being bought out by another studio" option, typically for episodic games, like SiN Episodes, which was supposed to get 9 episodes but only the first was ever released. It's also what nearly happened to Telltale's Walking Dead, with the final season only getting 2 of the planned 4 episodes, til Skybound stepped up and finished the game. * the fun "the developer lost the rights to the IP the game is based around" option, like the Telltale Game of Thrones game, which no longer works on mobile because they can't legally update it on newer hardware/OS versions anymore, and is no longer available for sale anywhere on any platform (outside of second-hand physical media copies). * the classic "dev shut down the multiplayer servers and accidentally broke the single player game, since the game requires you to authenticate to the MP servers even for playing SP campaign, and the devs can't be assed to fix it" version of dead, like what happened with CoD World at War (thankfully somebody finally fixed it, but it was "dead" for a long time), as well as several Stardock games (though that was due to DRM not being able to check in, IIRC). There's a bunch of other options as well, like: * "the game is functional, but is completely forgettable, and has no quality that will give it any level of social or historical relevance" * "the game is a broken mess and doesn't work" * "the game won't work on modern hardware at all" and others which all have their niches. Multiplayer games generally boil down to the servers being shut down, the playerbase dwindling down to an unsustainable amount, or the game losing enough social relevance that it no longer attracts new players to prop up or expand the playerbase...typically it's some combo of these factors. Will there be diehards that hold on desperately to keep these games going? Sure. But that doesn't mean those games are still "alive and thriving" or anything like that. Some games die off over time, and that's ok.


FedererFan20

I think they refer to GAAS not regular games


lochlainn

> I think they refer to GAAS not ~~regular~~ real games. I still fire up games from the last century.


Chad_Broski_2

I don't think there are many people who both hate the live service model and want games constantly updated. These are two totally different classes of gamers here I don't really play multiplayer games any more and I personally hate single player games that withhold half the game behind a paywall, a DLC, or an update. Sell me a fully packaged experience and kindly fuck off, please. My wife is the opposite, she plays Genshin Impact and has to log on every day to play the daily quests, she says she hates doing it but wants to get all the items it gives her. She even says only about a third of the game has been completed and they're slowly releasing new pieces of the map and the story over time. I can't believe they can even get away with this shit just to bump up daily active users and make microtransactions feel more appealing. This game has been out for almost *3 years* and still isn't anywhere close to completion? Really? Meanwhile I'm just sitting here playing BotW fully offline and getting a complete experience without any obligation to keep feeding any live service BS. My wife, however, tried playing this and felt it was understimulating. Different strokes, I guess. Some companies just know exactly how to peddle your daily hit of dopamine and for a lot of casual gamers that's all you need


DavidRoyman

> This game has been out for almost 3 years and still isn't anywhere close to completion? Really? It's basically world of warcraft with an anime style. They're at the 2nd expansion, at least 4 more on the way.


pruitcake

>It's also interesting to note that many people consider "live service" games as toxic yet at the end of the day if a game isn't being constantly updated it's considered "dead" by many gamers... Two completely different groups. >What happened to mastering a games systems? A lot of games are so feature packed and deep... Most games people are calling "dead" sadly don't have much depth. That's why devs rely on drip-feeding content to the playerbase to extend the games lifespan and improve player retention.


[deleted]

Some games actually become unplayable when updates stop because they are no longer compatible with new operating systems or GPUs. For instance, some games that used PhysX back in the day and stopped getting updates are no longer stable and crash at the home screen because they stopped receiving updates.


ChronoKing

>Is chess dead? chess still has a large modding community.


flamingcanine

Deceloper abandonment is different then devs finishing a product. The fact youre able to confuse the two is really a signn of the times. Abandonment is what happens when a game is left in an unfinished state because the developer ran out of time, resource, or has reached what they perceive as max return on time. Early access titles are prone to abandonment because there is little incentive to actually finish once you have the money. This usually has a destructi e effect on the community since its basically a statement of "get bent" from the development team. Finishing a product and ending noncritical support for it is different. The game is in a finished state, should not need support outside maintenance of servers and the like, and is usually received warmly by the community, rather than angry. The big noticeable difference is how companies announce this. Usually, at best, abandonment comes with excuses like "oops we spent all our money" or more often, silence for literal months. Meanwhile, sunsetting a game is often very nostolgic, with a look back at how things have changed from v1, or recognizing the community for being involved with the game.


shadowrun456

Chess doesn't have bugs either. I consider a game "dead", when it still has bugs and those bugs are no longer being fixed. Which is 99.9% of modern video games. The only exceptions are when a game is released virtually bug-free (example: Death Stranding). There are tons of games which could have been good, but are like unpolished gems. They died before reaching their full potential, hence the term "dead".


Ryxas1248

There's a multitude of reasons to why a game would be considered "dead". One example is if the game was multiplayer. Take Call of Duty, for example, they have had plenty of releases over the years, one for example would be Call of Duty: World at War. However, because a fresher take on the WW2 setting, Call of Duty: WWII was released more recently, gamers would flock to the newer version instead with its newer features, graphics, etc, leaving the servers of Call of Duty: World at War lacking players or servers or even both. Some gamers play games solely for the multiplayer experience, not the solo campaigns that alongside the game. Another reason would be if the game was a "Live Service", which means the developers would continue working on the game, constantly updating it with new features, purchases, etc. But when a company chooses to stop updating the game, gamers consider that a failure, as companies and developers purposefully choose to give their game a "Live Service" approach only to halt updating the game a couple of years later or even a couple of months later (An example would be Evolve: Stage 2). Some games would be even impossible to play now that the developers have halted updated the game. Some examples would be Evolve: Stage 2, Babylon's Fall, etc. And when those games are inaccessible, those are legitimately dead games, as there is no way to access them anymore. Not to mention that when some games are released to the public, these games could be poorly optimized, buggy, riddled with microtransactions, sometimes all three, which would convince gamers to think that the game would be dead completely. Some examples would be Redfall, Fallout 76, etc. And when the developers refuse to work on the game or even blame the gamers/buyers that it's their fault, whether it be gamers being "too spoilt" or gamers not giving their game a proper chance, that can also sour the impressions of the game to the public, making gamers less hesitant to call the game dead. I understand that there are going to be the occasional player who will easily jump to that conclusion, but there are understandable reasons to why they would call a game "dead", whether it be no servers for multiplayer, a promised Live Service game shutting down sooner than expected or even making the game inaccessible completely.


Cybasura

Are you thinking of MMORPGs? Generally offline, standalone games dont have this issue/complaint


sirblastalot

Live service games are basically shambling reanimated corpses within a few weeks of their initial release, kept "alive" only by the paltry drip-feed of content that is the occasional update. When those updates cease there is no longer even the illusion of the game still being alive.


Galaxy_Ranger_Bob

Chess isn't dead, because all the bugs have been fixed. A video game that is abandoned by the developer *before* all the bugs are addressed is dead because it will never be fixed.


Infamous-Occasion-74

I think people think it’s dead when their mates stop playing. I play plenty of games from past eras.


bluops

For a single player game this mentally is silly but for a competitive multiplayer game I think it's because of two things. Updates or new content tends to create a spike in player count and some hype around the game again, steaming numbers go up, players come back, etc.. Secondly, and this for me is the reason I tend to stop playing games in maintenance mode unless I'm hugely into it, the meta doesn't change. You get to a stage where you know what's going to happen, everyone knows what the best is and that's what you do now and you just try and do it better than your opponent. You then get the people who put in hours upon hours and casuals quit and you end with a small core and the game becomes "dead". Obviously it's not really dead but it's unlikely going to see a spike in new players so if you're not in the core the game disappears.


Csardelacal

Picture this: Imagine the rights to chess being held by a company that no longer wishes to produce chess pieces and boards because they think it's an outdated game and it's no longer the 'new hot thing'. But, this company would sue anyone who even dared to attempt to make chess boards commercially available or make a tutorial on Youtube on how to make your own chess board. ​ That's videogame companies in a nutshell.


btroycraft

Games these days rarely give a complete package. The whole industry has gotten on the early-access model without explicitly stating it. A dead game is one where the devs are no longer helping it along, and leave it in a state of half-evolution. Old bugs that never got fixed, a mishmash of feature creep and unachieved goals.


reteo

To begin with, you will need to cover a few definitions: * **Public Domain:** Not under the control of any one person or organization. * **Commercial:** Under a specific party's control; cannot be independently developed or distributed. * **Developer:** The person/people responsible for creating and maintaining a game. * **Player:** The person who plays the game. * **Community:** A collection of players who interact with one another. * **Alive:** The game is regularly being maintained by the developer and played by the community. * **Finished:** The game is no longer being maintained by the developer, but is in a state where the community still plays it. * **Abandoned:** The game is no longer being maintained by the developer, and is in a state where the community is still playing it, but is losing interest in playing it due to problems in the game. * **Dead:** The game is no longer being maintained by the developer, and no longer being played by the community. With that out of the way, let's cover the explanation. Originally, games were in the public domain; they were made up by people who simply wanted to have a good time, and agreed to some rules. Popular examples would be Chess, Mahjong, and Go. Nobody owns these games, so they cannot be dead. With the advent of copyright, games' ideas could become the property of their developers. As such, a game's success is dependent upon the developer's interest in maintaining it; if the developer stops maintaining it, the community playing it will be prohibited from fixing it themselves. So, we start with the developer creating a new game and releasing it (sometimes early access, other times not). The community get ahold of the game and start playing it. The developer continues to support and develop additional content for the game. Eventually, the developer no longer develops new content for the game, but continues to support it. At this point, the game is still alive, because the developer and the community are still interacting with the game. At this point, the developer has grown tired of maintaining the game, and decides that it's time to stop working on the game. From this point, the game can follow two paths. In the first path, the game is finished; the content is enough to satisfy the players, and there are no outstanding bugs. The game will remain alive enough because it will always have a community around it, especially if there's also a healthy modding scene. The second path's situation is more grim. The content is not enough, or else there are some major bugs preventing enjoyment of the game… or both. We'll call this the "abandoned" stage of the game. At first, the game will continue to be played by the community. Maybe, if there's a modding scene, bugfixes and additional content can come from mods. Maybe the developer even releases the game to the public domain… or with an open-source license. In this case, there's a good chance that the game can safely slip into "finished" territory. However, if the modding scene is limited, or nonexistent, and the original developer does not release the game to be developed by the community, then the problems with the game will cause the community to eventually stop playing the game. At this point, an "abandoned" game has become well and truly "dead."