Warner Bros. games will now have a "heavy focus on live service"
Warner Bros.' upcoming slate of games will seemingly lean heavily into the live service model.
An internship ad on the careers page for Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, which oversees the game publishing and development arm: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, has revealed an interesting insight into how the publisher views its upcoming games.
The ad (spotted by MauroNL), is for a games production MBA intern who will join the production department.
The page has the usual fluff about job requirements, plusses and what the candidate will be doing day-to-day. The interesting part comes in the introductory paragraph.
"WBIE is currently involved in a variety of new projects, ranging from casual games to core games featuring our well-known franchises on all platforms (console, digital, mobile) with a heavy focus on live service," it reads.
The page doesn't offer any specific details, but it's safe to say games currently in the works at Warner Bros.' own studios, as well as those published by the company, will offer some form of live service. This doesn't necessarily mean all games are going to be always-online Destiny-likes, it simply means Warner plans to keep them alive months and years after launch with new content, recurring events, and likely microtransactions in some way.
Looking at Warner's already announced games, many of them neatly fit that description. Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a multiplayer shooter. Likewise, WB Montreal's Gotham Knights could have a DLC-heavy future, even if its developers don't think of it as a live service game.
Indeed, Back 4 Blood, which Warner is publishing, is an online co-op shooter practically made to be a live service game. You can already imagine new characters, maps, costumes, weapons etc. arriving in season-style regular updates. For games like Hogwarts Legacy, however, things are less clear.
It's probably safe to assume that not every single game will follow that model. Something like LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga doesn't seem to be a live service game. We also don't know what Warner's other studios, like NetherRealm, Monolith and so on are working on, and whether or not their next projects are going to fit that definition.