Running live-service production when the game can't go down
A live game is a promise you re-make every day. Players show up expecting it to work, the content to land, and the patch not to break what they already paid for. Behind that is a production operation most players never see — and when it's run badly, they feel all of it.
I've run live-service production for two major products — Ubisoft Connect as Production Manager, and theHunter: Call of the Wild as Executive Producer — operating for millions of players. Here's what that work actually is.
The situation
A live product at real scale — theHunter: Call of the Wild alone has passed 10 million players — with a recurring content commitment (patches, DLC, seasonal content) and zero tolerance for downtime or regressions. The challenge isn't shipping once — it's shipping repeatedly, predictably, without breaking the live experience, while the team is already building the next thing.
The approach
- Release pipeline as a system, not an event — predictable cadence, clear gates, and the discipline to make releases boring (boring is the goal in live-service).
- Incident management that holds under pressure — defined severities, ownership, and response so a live issue is contained fast, not debated.
- Patch and DLC throughput balanced against stability — shipping content without destabilising what already works.
- Protecting revenue and player trust — treating the live operation as the asset it is, where every regression has a real cost.
The outcome
The outcome was an operation that stopped generating drama:
- Releases settled into a predictable cadence — shipping became routine, not an event.
- Incident response tightened: clear severities and ownership meant live issues were contained fast, not debated.
- Content kept shipping — patches and DLC — without major live regressions.
- Player-impacting downtime stayed low.
What this means for your studio
If your live game is bleeding — incidents you can't get ahead of, releases that scare you, patches that break as much as they fix — the operation underneath needs a forensic read. A two-week Live-Service / Crisis Audit finds why the operation is bleeding and what to change first. And if you want help running it, that's what a fractional Executive Producer is for.