Honestly, I have trouble seeing these "sequels" as new games. I mean Overwatch 2 was mostly a heavy balance patch, graphical patch, and pivot to F2P.

These are just large updates where they incremented a number in the name. With that in mind, this isn't a "trend", it's been going on for as long as these service-style games have existed. Fortnite's pivot from Save the World into Battle Royale, for example. Or going further back: Remember Star Wars Galaxies?

Yes, these mega-updates are often regressions... again, that's not news. The only thing "new" is realizing "oh, we should increment the number to get some hype going".

CS:GO is over a decade old and certainly isn't "killed", does the author just not want new games to be released ever? I feel like everything posted nowadays is ragebait.

I mean, EA started doing this as soon as they thought they could get away with it in the franchises that are the most obvious fit: sports games. Madden, NBA 2kX, PGA whatever...

At first, gamers would just feel left behind because there was a new title out to match the new season's roster of teams and players. No one batted an eye because that echoes how live sports keep up annual appeal. But over time, the publisher started taking the servers offline for the older sports games, so if you wanted to compete then the only option was to play a newer title.

I'm not saying that's inherently evil, and not to make a slippery slope argument, but it's not really hard to see how the lure of steady recurring revenue would drive the industry to do the same for as many franchises as possible. And here we are today where IIRC you can't play titles like Diablo IV offline even as a single player.

IMO as gamers, we need to collectively draw a line in the sand. But we're such a diverse group with different tastes and expectations, so I don't really see that happening.

How is this a trend? It happened with two games and you can still play one of them (CSGO).

EDIT: it happened with 4-ish games, actually, and the Blizzard games are the only ones we cannot play anymore.

You wouldn't subscribe to a service like Netflix if they required you to pay an additional fee to unlock each piece of content, nor would you pay money for a Netflix app that's useless without a subscription, but that's essentially what you're doing when you "buy" a live service game. Don't do that! Either pay once for a game that's fully playable offline, or pay monthly for a subscription to a live service game where the software to access it is free.

The publishers are being greedy assholes, but they couldn't do it if people didn't pay for the privilege of being scammed.

GaaS really helped me slim down my game purchases to just one or two a year with no online play.

Thank Gabe they'll never kill half life 2 with a sequel!

I mean ... Pikachu face? :)

So people switch to service based solutions for movies, games, music, ... where they own literally nothing because the actual owner is the corporation which sort of 'rent it' to them. And then they're surprised that provided stuff gets demolished by 'landlord' because it doesn't bring enough money to the landlord

Bring back Overwatch >:(

As someone who mostly plays offline single player games, I don’t really care what they “kill” by creating new enshittified versions of things. I already cultivated a save version of the game I like, it’s installed on a pc that rarely or never goes online that you can’t access and deactivate, and since you spent my 40 bucks already as per our agreement, I’ll enjoy it whenever I want forever without your input or any future consent required from your company. Cope.

Overwatch got significantly worse for me but I love all the changes to CSGO, so it's a mixed bag for me so far.