MassivelyOP’s 2024 Awards: Worst MMO Business Model

December 29, 2024 11:00 AM

Welcome back to Massively Overpowered’s formal end-of-the-year awards!

Today’s award is for the Worst MMO Business Model, which was awarded to Star Citizen last year. This award is intended to recognize a live MMORPG of any age that has demonstrated an abysmal, terrible, no-good business model specifically in 2024, regardless of its past performance. Don’t forget to cast your own vote in the just-for-fun reader poll at the very end!

And the MassivelyOP staff pick for the Worst MMO Business Model of 2024 is…

EVE FRONTIER

Andy McAdams: Ashes of Creation

Brianna Royce: EVE Frontier. I could’ve gone Roblox too, and I understand the temptation to give it to Star Citizen this year, and it’s not that Star Citizen doesn’t deserve it (again) – just that EVE Frontier is actually worse. And CCP Games didn’t help itself here as it happened to run a press blitz with friendly and gullible media trying to claim this blockchain MMO isn’t a blockchain MMO the very week we were debating these awards. Well, it’s a blockchain MMO, and whether or not the company is selling NFTs has no bearing on the reason the company took crypto investment to build a blockchain game that allows players to scam each other while it takes a cut. We weren’t born yesterday, CCP. Your investors might be dopes, but MMO players aren’t.

Carlo Lacsina: Crypto MMOs. Yeah no, these games aren’t games. It’s the type of bullshit we need to pushback on to make sure our games stay great.

Chris Neal: EVE Frontier, Star Citizen, World of Warcraft. Hey, CCP Games? You don’t get to paint a red apple green and call it a pear. This is a blockchain game. It’s on the blockchain. And I’m really sure that making it moddable within parameters of the game doesn’t require hitching it to a wildly insecure tech stack because some Kool-Aid drunken technochuds convinced you that it’s the future. Knock it off.

Eliot Lefebvre: EVE Frontier is an NFT scam masquerading as a game, full stop, we should not let the company get away with trying to pretend otherwise. Shame on you. Also Star Citizen is a grift at this point too, but it always wins.
Justin Olivetti: RuneScape. Jagex keeps jacking up the subscription prices of its flagship MMO, and players are really hating the more frequent increases in recent years. It doesn’t feel like the subscription model fits this well, especially at these higher price points.

Sam Kash: Age of Empires Mobile

Tyler Edwards: As always, my vote is for 1) Star Citizen and 2) MMOs that require a subscription fee to play.

EVE Frontier took our award for Worst MMO Business Model. What’s your pick?

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How does MassivelyOP choose the winner?

Our team gathers together to nominate and discuss candidates and hopefully settle on a consensus winner. We don’t have a hard vote, but we do include commentary from writers so that you can see our thought process. The site’s award goes to the staff selection, but we’ll include both it and the community’s top nomination in our debrief in January. Reader poll options include all MMOs nominated plus a few others we thought should be included.