After Just A Year, Capcom’s Live-Service Dino Game Is Going Extinct

Capcom announced today that after just a year of updates, its live-service dino killin’ game—Exoprimal—will be going on life support as it has no further plans to add new seasonal content to the game after its last update.

Exoprimal was first announced in March 2022 and immediately got people excited. Capcom was making a new video game featuring dinosaurs and a red-headed woman! Was this secretly a new Dino Crisis? Nope! But the game still seemed like a good idea, as it pitted mech-suited soldiers against time-traveling dinosaur hordes. It launched on July 12, 2023, with mixed reviews and not much excitement. It then received four seasons’ worth of content over the last 12 months. But after its more recent update, Capcom has confirmed it’s done expanding the live-service dino shooter after just 348 days.

On July 5, Capcom announced that “all planned Exoprimal seasonal content is now complete” and confirmed that starting on July 11, past seasons will just rotate in and out each month.

Capcom said in its blog post that Exorprimal isn’t shutting down. Its online services will remain up and the game will still be playable as before with all of its modes and content remaining. While it’s nice that the game isn’t entirely dead, its future looks bleak.

Most live-service games are doomed to die slowly and sadly

By confirming servers will stay around but no new seasonal content is planned, Capcom has essentially turned Exoprimal into a digital zombie, doomed to linger for months or years as players grow bored playing the same content over and over and eventually leave.

“If you’re playing [Exoprimal] alone or match with only a few other players, Bots (AI-controlled Exofighters) will still be added so that you can fully enjoy the Hammerheads’ story and reach the ending,” added Capcom in its blog post. So that’s nice! You can still enjoy the game’s full story and reach the end.

Still, it’s rather depressing that this is the best (and most likely) outcome for most live-service games that aren’t hugely successful. Eventually, once the publisher has drained the live-service game for all it can after keeping it around in zombie mode for a bit, the servers will likely be shut off and the game made unplayable. We’ve seen it before. We’ll likely see it again.

So if you planned on playing Exoprimal and finishing its storyline, I’d get around to it sooner or later before it ends up joining the ever-growing list of dead, unplayable online games.

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