justOnePersistentKbinPlease

Well, no.
Deep Rock Galactic has fully optional skin packs to make money and they’re doing great.

Warframe has been chugging along for over a decade now and they’re doing great. Beating the pants off of Destiny 2 for average player count.

The live service trick is that live service only works if the company actually cares about the product. Those two companies stand out because they legitimately care and have great communication with their communities.

Fair, I have connections to a few that were fairly serious during 2, most of which were in tournies, one of those never bought 3, but the rest gave it a shot.

The ripoff that is S3 seems to be nails in the proverbial coffin.

They killed Splatoon’s grassroots Esport community thanks to them making a quick buck with splatoon 3, that promised a bunch of network functionality improvements that never materialized.

So now, a game that used to have multiple small but growing international tournaments now has nothing. Hell, they used to have tournaments on the main stage at PAX East.