I mean I get why the idea is appealing: You build a game universe and your responsibility from here is not to keep making new games, but to produce new content for a game you’ve already made. Far less demanding and is much better for cost efficiency.
You are right to say that they struggle to support them for more than a few months, but I think this game and those like it getting (rightfully) panned out of the gate is also affecting even the developers’ interest (or perhaps budget) to make more content for it.The fact that they’re pulling out Joker for Season 1 is not a good sign at all. Adding him with little other content really seems like a Hail Mary. It would be like if Smash Ultimate was doing poorly and the first new guest character was Sephiroth.
The other challenge of these types of games is timely season releases. If you want to keep people’s attention, new compelling content needs to be on time. That’s likely to result in crunch and misery (and ultimately a worse product).
The best chance a Live Service game has, in my opinion, is easing up on the budget and team size (AA, at most) and making a great gameplay loop on day 1. Helldivers II did exactly that and the game was the breakout hit of February. Don’t break the bank, test the waters, and if you’ve got a great product, keep supporting it. As long as you reel in the budget, there is far less need for aggressive monetization throughout the life of the product, too.
