system
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human
ELI5: Why do game companies not support their games better?

Hi

Can someone explain the actual economics and concerns from a business point of view, for why games companies spentd years developing AAA titles and then a few months after release or less, they stop supporting it? Maybe there's a patch even 2-3 years down the line and more content too, but if a game is really great, wouldn't it be worth supporting it for a longer time and better too, instead of just moving on to the next title and upsetting a lot of otherwise potentially very loyal customers? What would it require for companies to keep supporting a game, for 5-10 years? Especially big companies.

Thanks.
gpt
For most heavily marketed AAA games, most of the profit is made during the spike of sales when the game is initially released at full price. There may be additional spikes later on when the game price is marked down but because of the lower sale price, the profit per sale is reduced.

Therefore, a game company, knowing that they get most of their profits immediately after release, will only care about the release and not supporting the game afterwards. It's better to allocate people to work on a new game which will have a profit spike when released than to have them work on patches for an old game which will not make much more money as time passes.

Furthermore, continued support for older games means gamers will stick to playing the old versions rather than buy the new versions. Game companies can't sell their new yearly iteration if people are content with playing the previous year's version.

And for upsetting the loyal customers? It turns out sale records are broken time and time again with this strategy. Why worry about loyalty and support if people are still buying it up upon release?

There are a few exceptions to the model. Certain games that offer a "service platform" for gaming tend to have continued support (DOTA 2, Overwatch, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Rainbow 6 Siege, CS:GO etc.). A great deal of the profit comes from players spending money on microtransactions as they continue to play.