By mid-2025, the open-world gaming landscape had fractured. Once-revered franchises like Ubisoft Entertainment SA’s Far Cry, The Coalition’s Gears of War, and NetEase’s Marvel Rivals were hemorrhaging players—some losing over 90% of their audience within months. What happened? Five years after their 2020 peak, these games didn’t just fade. They collapsed. And it wasn’t just bad luck. It was a perfect storm of creative fatigue, ballooning costs, and a quiet but seismic shift in what players actually want.
The Unraveling of Far Cry’s Magic
Far Cry 5, released in 2018, was the last true high watermark. Its blend of unpredictable chaos, wild side missions, and eerie, immersive environments made it an icon. But by 2020, something shifted. The sense of discovery—the kind that made you stumble upon a cult compound hidden in the woods, or accidentally trigger a bear attack while stealing a tractor—started vanishing. Replacements? Repetitive outposts. Same enemy AI. Same loot grind. By 2025, even loyal fans were saying it out loud: "It feels like a checklist, not an adventure." According to a widely cited YouTube analysis, "the sense of discovery and unpredictability that defined Far Cry started to fade, leaving even its most devoted fans craving something new." The series had become a victim of its own success: too big to innovate, too expensive to risk. Ubisoft’s Montreuil headquarters, under CEO Yves Guillemot, kept releasing sequels—but each one felt more like a re-skin than a reinvention.
When Giants Fall: Marvel Rivals, Monster Hunter, and Avowed
It wasn’t just Far Cry. NetEase’s Marvel Rivals, launched in late 2024 with a peak of over 644,000 concurrent players, lost nearly 80% of its audience by May 2025. The Seattle studio, once a symbol of Western talent, was shut down. Resources moved to China. Same story with Capcom Co., Ltd.’s Monster Hunter: Wilds. It exploded on Steam with over 1.3 million players at launch—then lost 98% in under six months. Why? Too many bugs. Too little content. Too much pressure to match Fortnite’s live-service model.
Then came Avowed, Obsidian Entertainment’s ambitious fantasy RPG under Phil Spencer’s Microsoft Gaming. Launched in February 2025, it promised a rich, hand-crafted world. Instead, it launched with broken AI, janky animations, and a UI that felt like a beta test. Within a week, active players dropped by over 80%. Microsoft claimed 5 million players in the first month—but most were free Game Pass subscribers who never paid a cent. That’s not success. That’s smoke and mirrors.
The Post-Pandemic Crash
The 2020 gaming boom was a fever dream. With lockdowns, console sales surged. Digital game spending hit $42.9 billion—up 33.9% in a single year, according to IDC. Publishers saw dollar signs and doubled down. They hired aggressively. They promised cinematic worlds. They signed billion-dollar deals. But when the world reopened, the bubble popped. Player attention shifted. Mobile games kept growing. Battle royales dominated. And players started asking: "Why am I paying $70 for a game that feels like a theme park ride?" Enter Harvey Nguyen, whose Substack piece, "State of the Gaming Industry 2025: Darker Before Dawn?", captured the mood: "Player sentiment is shifting. Gamers increasingly want less focus on AAA spectacle and more on authenticity and substance." That’s the death knell for franchises built on spectacle alone.
The Eastward Shift: When China Bought the Tools
The industry didn’t just shrink—it migrated. NetEase didn’t just cancel Marvel Rivals. It closed its Seattle studio and moved its best developers to Shanghai. Same with other Chinese investors: they acquired Western studios, absorbed their IP, then quietly shifted operations east, where labor costs are a fraction of the West’s. This wasn’t just outsourcing. It was a strategic takeover of creative talent.
Meanwhile, The Embracer Group canceled 29 projects. Microsoft axed "Odyssey," a Blizzard project six years in the making. Between 2022 and July 2025, an estimated 45,000 jobs vanished. DDM Games called it a "reset phase." And it’s not over. The open-world model—once king—is now seen as a financial liability. Too expensive. Too risky. Too slow to adapt.
What’s Left Standing?
Not much. But there are glimmers. Oblivion Remastered, quietly released in 2025 after years of fan demand, became a surprise hit—not because it had new graphics, but because it remembered what made open worlds great: freedom, curiosity, and quiet moments. No quest markers. No radar. Just a world waiting to be explored.
That’s the lesson the industry is finally learning. Players don’t want more content. They want more meaning. More surprise. More soul.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Far Cry lose its appeal after 2020?
Far Cry’s appeal faded because its gameplay became formulaic. After Far Cry 5, sequels replaced unpredictable exploration with repetitive outposts, identical enemy AI, and scripted events. Fans craved the organic chaos of earlier entries—like stumbling on a cult leader’s hidden bunker or triggering a wild animal stampede—but those moments vanished under pressure to deliver "content" on a schedule. The magic wasn’t lost—it was engineered out.
How did Marvel Rivals collapse so fast?
Marvel Rivals peaked at over 644,000 concurrent players but lost 80% of its base by May 2025. The game suffered from shallow progression, repetitive maps, and a lack of meaningful updates. Unlike successful live-service titles, it didn’t evolve with player feedback. When NetEase shut down its Seattle studio, development halted entirely. The game became a ghost town overnight.
What role did the pandemic play in this collapse?
The 2020 pandemic triggered a 33.9% spike in console game spending, reaching $42.9 billion. Publishers over-hired, over-promised, and over-invested in AAA open-world titles. When the world reopened, demand dropped. Players returned to real life, and many games couldn’t sustain their player counts. The boom didn’t create loyal fans—it created temporary traffic.
Why are Chinese companies taking over Western game studios?
Chinese firms like NetEase and Tencent buy Western studios to acquire talent, IP, and global brand recognition. But they shift development to lower-cost regions like China and Southeast Asia, where salaries are 60-70% lower. This isn’t just outsourcing—it’s a long-term strategy to control creative pipelines while cutting expenses. The result? Western studios lose autonomy, and games lose their cultural edge.
Is the open-world genre dead?
Not dead—but the old model is. Games like Oblivion Remastered proved that players still crave exploration, but they want it done right: thoughtful, quiet, and authentic—not bloated with microtransactions and 50-hour grind loops. The future belongs to smaller, more focused open worlds, not billion-dollar spectacles. The era of "more is better" is over.
What’s next for Ubisoft and other publishers?
Ubisoft is reportedly scaling back its open-world ambitions, focusing on smaller, narrative-driven titles and live-service spin-offs. Other publishers are experimenting with procedural generation and player-driven storytelling to reduce costs. But without a cultural shift in design philosophy, many will keep chasing the ghost of 2020—while the players move on.