Making a good video game is not an easy thing to do. It requires years of work by hundreds of developers, and even then there’s no guarantee that your title will be able to make a splash in an increasingly saturated marketplace.

Even harder than simply making a new and captivating video game is making a successful esport. This is because esports have to be finely balanced both to appeal to casual players, and have high enough skill ceilings to keep pro-gamers engaged.

They also need to offer something that the current leading esports do not. Many games have tried, and failed, to displace CS:GO as the world’s most popular FPS esport, for example. Even a decade following its release, OddsChecker — which provides and compares offers on esports wagers — cites CS:GO as one of its most popular metrics by betting volume globally.

The secret to its success is a complex cocktail of big name recognition, a strong and deep competitive circuit going back decades, and a sleek and well honed engine that delivers a perfectly balanced FPS experience. No wonder games as disparate as Apex Legends, PUBG, Rainbow Six: Siege and VALORANT have thus far failed to dislodge its preeminence.

What those games did achieve, however, is a small and consistent player-base and enough income through microtransactions to remain viable as live service titles. The same cannot be said for the two recent high profile esports duds below.

Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier

When people attempt to figure out what went wrong with The First Soldier, many point to the fact that it launched as a mobile-only title. While this may have limited its reach initially, the runaway success of the likes of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Free Fire demonstrate that being mobile-only isn’t in and of itself a death sentence.

More likely, The First Soldier was simply poorly implemented. A clunky fusion of JRPG combat and the battle royale model, it lacked satisfying gameplay loops and enough to differentiate itself from better and more comprehensive rivals, save its franchise association. FFVII: The First Soldier barely lasted a year before its servers closed down for good.

Star Wars: Squadrons

Another title that could bank on its big brand recognition to get a leg up was Star Wars: Squadrons, developed by Motive Studio and published by EA; however, it never really left the starting gate. What’s more, this is a shame since the gameplay was solid, and the premise was novel for the esports market—a 5v5 aerial combat title.

What is thought to have doomed Squadrons at the outset was its lack of live support. In effect, once the game launched, EA did next to nothing to support it, promote it, add new content or build out its competitive elements.

A good esport needs ongoing support from its developer if its to become the next big competitive title, and it appears that EA were content to have it be little more than another iteration in their long running partnership with the franchise, to the detriment of esports gamers and Star Wars fans alike.