Why did split-screen gaming vanish when it was the most fun you could have on one screen?
Local multiplayer didn’t vanish because players stopped enjoying it. It vanished because publishers couldn’t monetise it. You can’t charge four people for the same experience when they’re all in the same room. You can’t push seasonal cosmetics or track engagement through a sofa.
So it got phased out. Quietly. No announcement. No moment where everyone agreed to move on. It just became harder to find. One generation supported it. The next barely mentioned it. Suddenly “multiplayer” meant online only, and couch co-op became a novelty instead of a standard.
And something got lost in the process.
Online multiplayer works. It’s convenient. Sometimes it’s the only option. But it doesn’t feel the same. It doesn’t feel like being there. The shared screen. The instant reactions. The trash talk that doesn’t rely on a mic. The accidental sabotage. The look someone gives you when you throw a match because you’re laughing too hard to aim. That stuff doesn’t translate online.
Some of the best gaming memories people have came from being in the same room. Four-player GoldenEye with the screen cut into quarters. LAN parties where the room smelled like cable spaghetti and bad pizza. TimeSplitters 2. Halo 2. Worms. Pro Evo. Even the cheap mini-games from a disc on the front of a magazine. Games where you didn’t need a server, a headset, or a Discord call, just enough controllers and a half-working TV.
Some of the most fun I had was playing Worms.
Modern games are bigger. They’re louder. They connect players across continents. But they don’t bring them together. Not in the same way. You can play with dozens of strangers, but not with the person sitting next to you. You get lag, lobbies, voice filters, and mute buttons. The chaos is missing. The energy is gone.
Developers blame screen size, technical limitations, and network design. But the truth is local play got squeezed out by business models. It doesn’t drive recurring revenue. It doesn’t inflate playtime stats. It doesn’t pad out a battle pass. And it certainly doesn’t convert into store sales for four individual accounts. It just exists, quietly, without the marketing hooks.
That’s the real reason it died.
It also doesn’t help that console interfaces got worse. Try setting up local multiplayer now. Half the time you need a second account, or a controller that’s updated, or a subscription just to get past the main menu. It’s a mess. And when it does work, you get a tiny selection of games that still support it, most of them niche or retro.
There are exceptions. Some indie games still get it. Overcooked. TowerFall Ascension. Nidhogg. A few others. But these are the outliers. They’re designed for local play. Most big releases don’t even pretend to include it anymore. And no one seems to ask why.
You lose more than gameplay when you lose local multiplayer. You lose the part of gaming that felt personal. Shared reactions. Shared failures. You lose the nonsense moments that don’t show up in highlight reels. Someone unplugging a controller mid-match. Someone throwing a fit and storming off. Someone picking Oddjob just to be annoying.
And all of that mattered. That’s the stuff people remember. Not “we won a ranked match with strangers in silence,” but “you knocked me off the track and I still haven’t forgiven you.” Local multiplayer was chaotic and stupid and brilliant. Now it’s mostly gone.
Gaming didn’t need to grow out of it. It just needed to stop pretending it was irrelevant.
What was the last game you played with someone in the same room?
