Summary

  • Capcom's Exoprimal has gone the way of countless failed live-service games, with no more seasonal content planned.
  • Any live-service game that doesn't blow up beyond expectations is bound to get shut down within years because it's not worth maintaining.
  • Maybe we should just stop flooding the market with live-service games that are doomed to closure?

Capcom announced last week that its year old live-service game Exoprimal will have no more seasonal content after its recently released Title Update 4. It won’t shut servers down completely, but will be cycling through its four existing seasons on the first of every month, starting with the first season on 11 July.

According to a post on Exoprimal’s website, players will be able to purchase season passes for the first three seasons in order to obtain items from all the seasons, and there’s a discounted set of passes for all four seasons in the Exoprimal Survival Pass: Premium Tier Pack. All gameplay modes will remain playable, and AI-controlled Exofighters will be added to the game so players can still play through the game. There will apparently also still be weekly campaigns and routine missions, as well as Limited Time Campaigns during holiday seasons that will reward players with special cosmetics.

The game was released to mixed reception – our own James Troughton called it exhausting and highlighted its poor monetisation, while Ben Sledge was astounded at how it managed to make dinosaurs boring. Features Lead Jade King gave it two out of five stars in their review, but also said that the game shows lots of untapped potential as you keep playing.

Who’s Still Playing Exoprimal?

Players seem to feel the same about the game, and nobody is really playing it anymore. At the time of writing, the game has a 24-hour peak of just 71 players, down from its all-time peak of nearly 5,000 eight months ago. That’s a brutal one percent player retention, at least on Steam – it’s hard to judge how many people are still playing on console, but I can’t imagine it’s much higher. If we generously peg the number of people playing to 300, that still spells death for Exoprimal. You can’t really blame Capcom for its decision to stop supporting the game.

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Unfortunately, This Is The Fate Of Many Live Service Games

What’s happened to Exoprimal is relatively mild, all things considered. The game is still playable in its current form, servers will stay online (for now), and all the content is still accessible. It’s similar to what Rockstar did with Red Dead Online and Redfall met the same fate after the dissolution of Arkane Austin. We can only hope for the same for games like Destiny 2, which is soon approaching its end and has loads of early content completely inaccessible to new players.

I myself have tried getting into Destiny 2, but the amount of vaulted content stopping me from experiencing the game’s story firsthand put me off.

Realistically, this is the best possible outcome for live-service games that don’t take the world by storm. While games like Helldivers 2 continue to draw players, albeit at much smaller numbers than before, there are plenty of games in the genre that weren’t as successful at capturing – and keeping – the attention of live-service diehards and only lasted for a short while before petering out. It’s likely that, like many of these games, Exoprimal will be around for a little while longer, until its players are all gone, then the servers will be shut off and it’ll be gone forever.

We’ve seen this happen with BioWare’s 2019 release Anthem and Square Enix’s 2020 release Marvel’s Avengers. The EA-published 2020 release Rocket Arena was unceremoniously delisted in 2023, and I suspect the much maligned ‘quadruple-A’ Skull & Bones and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will go the same way in time.

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When Will Studios Stop Chasing The Trend?

Looking at just how many live-service games have been shut down in the last few years, you’d think that triple-A studios would stop churning out games as a service considering the significant financial risk they’re taking. And yet, the trend continues. This year, we’ve gotten the aforementioned Suicide Squad and Skull & Bones, Helldivers 2, Zenless Zone Zero, The First Descendant, XDefiant, Foamstars, Multiversus, and Concord is slated for release later in the year.

Sony alone has committed to releasing six of its 12 upcoming live-service games before March 2026. That’s after it cancelled Naughty Dog’s multiplayer Factions spin-off due to a perceived lack of quality. It’s shocking how many games this company alone is unleashing on an already painfully oversaturated market, knowing that anything less than a stellar reception will mean having to shutter them despite millions of dollars of investment.

In a financial climate where studios are getting shut down despite financial and critical success, Exoprimal should serve as a lesson to studios to look elsewhere. If a game gets middling reception on launch, that’s likely to be a huge financial blow. That’s the case with any game, but especially with live-service games that cost money to maintain and need regular players to continue existing. Most live-service games will meet the same fate, infuriating players who’ve dumped money into them in the process. The best time to rethink live-service-first strategies was years ago, but the second-best time is right now.

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Exoprimal

Third-Person Shooter 2.0/5 Released July 14, 2023 ESRB M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood, Strong Language, Violence Developer(s) Capcom Publisher(s) Capcom Engine RE Engine Multiplayer Online Multiplayer Cross-Platform Play PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S
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WHERE TO PLAY

SUBSCRIPTION
DIGITAL
PHYSICAL

Exoprimal is an action game developed by Capcom, featuring PvPvE combat. As an Exofighter, you must team up with other players battle a rogue AI, as well as a number of powerful dinosaurs.

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