Between the rise of very advanced cheats and bots that make playing fair redundant, ever-worsening internet performance and the untimely demise of social interactions in favor of minimal communication though emotes, it seems like there is declining interest in online play. As an example, this community is rightfully weary of the impact that introducing an auction house would have on botting in this game, while demand for a SSF mode is at an all time high.
Do we think that over the next 10 years there will be a resurgence of singleplayer games? Will people just not want to interact with others online for fear of wasting their time on a chatGPT or fighting malicious bots in competitive games?
This post was inspired by today’s revelation that the top of PvP ladders in WoW are completely taken over by scripts, cheats and bots that hack the game’s API’s protected functionality.
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im down for singleplayer games , just put a global mirc chat in there and we good for the multiplayer illusion
I don’t think multi-player games are on the way out. I suspect massively overly monetized live service games may be on the way out. Primarily due to market oversaturization. There’s too many live service games out there competing for players money and time, and require long term player playtime to survive.
But how do you make an online game with competitive aspects these days? For example if you release an FPS, it will be completely overrun by aimbotters on day 2 which will drive honest players away
I think the problem is publishers feel obliged to include multiplayer in every damn genre, regardless of whether it would work, or the game suited it.
So now we have games distorted by features they were never designed to include.
Plus of course, that means that every game has its very own forum of overflowing toxicity.
Many pvp games are still going and strong: LoL, Dota2, CS, Valorant, Apex, Fortnite, Fighting Games etc…
They got many cheaters yet people play this games (myself included), because they like the competition against honest players and because the game is fun.
The battle between anti cheat software and cheaters is somewhat like the eternal conflict in Diablo.
However it’s just a question if game companys are willing to increase their legal force actions against bot and cheat creators or if they are willing to invest/spend money and time into anti cheat software.
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Yeah yeah…some publishers said the same thing about single player games a few years ago.
You know somewhere in the past someone said “more people improve games” and everyone just accepted that as fact and ran off to the multiplayer revolution.
Meanwhile I am still stuck on “How do more people make games more fun?”
Don’t get me wrong I like some people. But IRL you make subtle choices about the people you surround yourself with, whether you are aware of it or not.
Just masses of unaccountable people on the internet with possibly no filters (I am looking at you kids)…yeah that does not sound appealing…at all. 
All live service games need to die.
eh… games are increasingly more online and multiplayer.
Live service, battle royale, team based FPS, moba, all of those are more popular than ever.
A decade or two ago games barely had any anticheat. Some of the bigger ones like battlefield 1942 had them, but something like soldier of fortune didn’t even have any at all
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Live service seems to be declining in popularity, but honestly, other multiplayer games are doing anti cheat, social interactions and server hosting just fine.
Diablo just kind of failed hard at delivering the online game experience.
Most mp competitive games had anti-cheat even back then.
Even Unreal Tournament had it in 1999. Were they good?? It was iterative for periods where they worked and then were beaten. But honestly there just seemed to be less cheaters back then also and more communities.
Yeah, what I said, the bigger ones had them. And they were extremely rudimentary and had to be manually updated.
Compared to today where everything has anticheat with AI behind the scenes and entire teams investigating and following ‘hacking’ trends… I think it’s ironically safer now than before
It’s just more obvious and easier to see because people make youtube videos about it, talk on forums and reddit about it
I think it is worse now because back then at least people who played showed up because they liked competition. Even cheaters wanted to win.
Now it’s like “bro Hanzo is not working, can you please try something else?” You get trolled by your own team. 
I do think OW’s anticheat is decent compared to like EasyCheat for Apex.
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Yeah true I think what did happen was the whole le funny trolling mentality started to take over boosting people into doing it just to annoy others
Then again back then you could pretty much freely download a bot for anything. MMO’s were terrible back then, even if they had anti cheat it was so basic that there were endless bots. But back then people did it because they wanted to be high level. Now people do it to make a living in selling characters and gold :\ basically a business
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Most games are already singleplayer. Fortunately. Hardly needs a resurgence.
Multiplayer wont go anywhere either though. Both will have a significant share of the market.
Cant say I would miss multiplayer games particularly much however. By far most of the games I would consider good are singleplayer games.
While I doubt it, I sure hope.
Yes please.
Meh i think there will continue to be both. Social interaction will always have a place in gaming. Most people dont care about bots or cheats in co-op games, only in head-to-head. Other people cheating doesnt really effect me in games like WoW or PoE or D4.
What I think should happen in some games is more randomized content so that third parties cant just make guides or easily map a global solution.
Like in D4, why are all the helltide mystery chest locations hard-coded for everyone so you need to open a website to tell you where to go? Why not just put the chest in a random location in the zone so I have to actually search for it as intended?
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