‘Live service’ has been a vilified term in the gaming space for over a decade. Gamers are seeing through predatory monetary schemes that publishers are abusing with the live service model and have become wary. But the live service concept isn’t one without merit. MMOs are live service by definition, after all. FFXIV and World of Warcraft are some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed games. Still, they’re the exception and not the rule. With the sea of live service dumpster fires out there, which ones truly stand out as awful? We’re here to explore such a question with the top 10 shortest-lived live service games of all time.
10. Orcs Must Die! Unchained: April 19, 2017 – April 16, 2019
Image Source: Robot Entertainment
Orcs Must Die! Unchained was the free-to-play cousin to the main series’ popular tower defense games. Despite its monetary model featuring pay-to-win microtransactions and the like, Orcs Must Die! Unchained remains one of the highest-rated games in the series with an 87 Metacritic score on PC.