‘You Buy the Game and You Get the Whole Thing’: Judas Dev Not About Live Service

BioShock creator Ken Levine understands why much of the industry is still chasing the live service trend, but in his next game, Judas, developer Ghost Story Games is simply working towards the following: “You buy the game and you get the whole thing.”

The single player, story-focused rogue-like still remains a mystery, announced for PS5 in December 2022. However, in a recent interview with Nightdive Studios (via GamesRadar), Ken Levine called it an “old-school game” where you get the entire experience for the asking price.

“You buy the game and you get the whole thing. There’s no online component, there’s no live service, because everything we do is in service of telling the story and transporting the player,” he said.

Pointing to the difficulties the games industry currently faces, Levine understands why a studio might chase live service trends and implement extra monetisation options where there usually wouldn’t be. “This is no diss on any developers who have done that, because look, games are expensive to make,” he explained, and he doesn’t “blame anyone for trying to make a living”.

As a counterpoint, though, Levine points to the recent successes of Baldur’s Gate 3, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as proof that you can still make single player games and turn a tidy profit.

“These are games that are really traditional single-player games, and they don’t have that kind of monetisation in them, and I think the audiences reward those games, especially in the AAA space because they can get so expensive that people want other methods of monetisation,” he added.

Levine will be hoping Judas can join that crowd when it eventually releases on PS5. The game lacks a release window, and hasn’t been seen in any capacity since March 2024. At least Levine’s comments essentially confirm you will not be buying character skins and completing any Battle Passes in Judas.