Live-service is a term that is often derided these days, and understandably so. It’s often attached to high-profile multiplayer games, usually bad ones, that let you in the door for free but attempt to make their money through constant support and additional monetization. Concord and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League weren’t free, but they fit the mold.

Both of those games crashed and burned quite spectacularly last year, with their support pulled and the reputation of the developers thoroughly in tatters. While it’s difficult to claim that they flopped because they were live-service games, the failure of Concord was enough to force PlayStation into reassessing its current projects and start making some difficult decisions.

However, it doesn’t appear as though every triple-A developer out there is taking the same lessons on board. According to an annual survey released by the Game Developers Conference (GDC) that included over 3,000 developers from triple-A studios, a third of them claimed that they are working on a live-service game.

GDC Survey Reveals 33 Percent Of Triple-A Developers Are Working On Live-Service

Across every respondent, a total of 16 percent claimed that they were actively working on a live-service game, while another 13 percent of respondents claimed that they’d like to make one. For those of you that hate live-service with a passion, there is some hope, as a whopping 41 percent of all respondents claimed they weren’t interested in live service in the slightest.

The developers that are interested in live service apparently claimed that the “financial and community-building benefits of the strategy” were appealing, while those that aren’t interested claimed that there were too many worries surrounding things like “declining player interest, creative stagnation, predatory practices, microtransactions and the risk of burnout.” Market saturation was also apparently a big concern.

A third of all triple-A developers is a worrying amount, though there are some issues regarding the people who responded. Firstly, 3,000 developers is a relatively small sample that you can’t for certain say would scale up globally. According to the survey, 58 percent of respondents came from the US, with the UK, Canada, and Australia making up another 16 percent.

It was also pointed out on Bluesky (thanks PC Gamer) that there are no significant respondents from China, and that “only two non-Western nations accounted for more than 1 percent of responses”. GDC itself also notes that the survey “may overly represent the experiences of developers in the West”.

Still, a group of over 3,000 developers is still a decent sample, and there’s every chance that getting more responses from countries such as China could make even worse reading, as the country is home to studios that make games like Genshin Impact and the recently released Marvel Rivals. At the very least, it’s a sign that the push for live-service hasn’t slowed just yet, despite so many high-profile disasters.