Capcom announced today that after just a year of updates, its live-service dino-killin’ game—Exoprimal—will be put on life support as there are no further plans to add new seasonal content to the game after the latest update.
Exoprimal was first announced in March 2022 and people immediately got excited. Capcom made a new video game with dinosaurs and a red-haired woman! Was this secretly a new one? Dino crisis? No! But the game still seemed like a good idea, as it pitted mech-suit soldiers against time-traveling dinosaur hordes. It was released on July 12, 2023, with mixed reviews and not much excitement. It then got four seasons of content in the last 12 months. But after the most recent update, Capcom has confirmed it has finished expanding the live-service dino shooter after just 348 days.
On July 5, Capcom announced that “all planned Exoprimal “Seasonal content is now complete,” he confirmed, adding that starting July 11, previous seasons will rotate each month.
Capcom said in its blog post That Exorprimal is not closing. The online services will remain online and the game will still be playable as before, with all modes and content still available. While it is nice that the game is not completely dead, the future looks bleak.
Most live service games are doomed to die a slow and sad death
By confirming that the servers will remain, but that no new seasonal content is planned, Capcom has essentially Exoprimal turn into a digital zombie, stuck in the game for months or years as players get bored of playing the same content over and over again and eventually leave.
“When you play [Exoprimal] Whether you’re playing solo or matching with just a few other players, Bots (AI-controlled Exofighters) will still be added so you can fully enjoy the Hammerheads’ story and reach the ending,” Capcom added in its blog post. So that’s nice! You can still enjoy the game’s full story and reach the ending.
Still, it’s rather depressing that this is the best (and most likely) outcome for most live-service games that aren’t wildly successful. Eventually, once the publisher has completely sucked the live-service game dry after keeping it in zombie mode for a while, they’ll likely shut down the servers and render the game unplayable. We’ve seen it before. We’ll probably see it again..
So if you were planning on playing Exoprimal and if I were to finish the storyline, I would get to it sooner or later before it got to the ever growing list of dead, unplayable online games.
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