Mastodawn

"Gamers aren't buying games anymore":
https://www.vice.com/en/article/us-gamers-arent-buying-video-games-anymore-new-study-reveals
During the big platform subscription service push 6-8 years ago I was sounding the alarm about this. It seems inarguable now that the mass devaluation did happen and we are dealing with its consequences.

Of course, two other dynamics that have significantly influenced this are "it's now possible for basically anyone to make and publish a game" and "hardware has lasted longer and companies aren't able to force stuff into obsolescence as easily" (thus people have much greater access to older works) - these are good things! We can't and won't turn back the clock on those. But they combine with the more deliberate corporate strategies to make the current landscape fraught.

Christiaan Moleman Mar 3

@jplebreton Another factor is all this is happening in a time of record inflation and exploding cost of living (esp energy) and massive uncertainty, which means people have considerably less disposable income to spend on non-essential things.

Most couldn't afford to buy all the games at full price even if they wanted to. Raising prices and doing away with deep sales as some have suggested would only make things worse. People will just buy even fewer games with same amount of money.

Terminal Tilt Mar 3

Between buying and consolidating half the industry and pushing their increasingly shitty platform (Game Pass), Microsoft is probably the biggest culprit for the decline in gaming.

Matt Mascarenhas Mar 3

@jplebreton It's because of all this that I always sit through the credits of everything, games, TV, film. As a continuous reminder that they're made by people.

It frustrates me no end when VoD platforms shrink the video during the credits, in favour of plugging some other bit of content.

Torbjörn Norinder Mar 3

@jplebreton could also be stuffed backlogs. Hardware prices being what they are means I haven’t upgraded since 2018, but there’s at least 50 unplayed games in my Steam library so I’m fine.

Torbjörn Norinder Mar 3

@jplebreton I think people underestimate how much the traditional games industry relied on retail product flow to sell new stuff. Limited shelf space = old products go away, hence you buy new stuff. That era is completely gone and now there’s enormous margin pressure from an ever-growing Steam catalog.

joe wintergreen Mar 3

@jplebreton at one point when egs was throwing exclusivity money around indiscriminately and i was hoping to ship something imminently, i was vaguely hoping to maybe secure some of that (what would have been lifechanging money). in hindsight i think there would have been no surer way to make sure nobody ever played it. game pass i think is the same thing. kind of takes away the very act of entering the audience

Per Vognsen Mar 3

@jplebreton It's really been a multi-phase assault. First F2P, then Steam sales, then GamePass and other lossleader subscriptions. F2P was ultimately less impactful to price vs value perception in the West because it's been for disjoint categories of games. Steam sales definitely conditioned people heavily in the PC space. What happened with GamePass was extremely predictable and unlike with Steam I think it's just an unmitigated bad thing unless you personally got the early money bags.

Per Vognsen Mar 3

@jplebreton We should probably also include early Humble Bundle in that mix. Which in addition to everything else had built-in charity-washing. It's been forgotten about so completely now that any time I see a pen-and-paper RPG bundle on some subreddit I follow, my reaction is always, "Oh yeah, some version of that company still exists".

Josh Simmons Mar 3

@pervognsen @jplebreton i also find it interesting how effective the pay-what-you-want style in f2p (and things like humble bundle) is at extracting a lot of cash dollars when inequality of income increases. i'm guessing we're going to keep seeing deeper segmentation of the streaming market as well as companies try to lever as much as possible out of the community of higher income earners, while they slide ad revenue back in underneath to benefit from the broad subscriber base.

Daniel Gibson Mar 3

@pervognsen @jplebreton
Where do you draw the line?
In the 90s you could buy old games very cheaply, either single ones (in Germany we had "ak tronic Pyramide" sections in stores, IIRC <= 10EUR, often <= 5?) or collections with dozens of games for relatively little money (e.g. the "Gold Games" series in Germany, >20 games, some of them pretty recent and/or high-profile, for 50DM or later 25-30EUR https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Games)

Gold Games – Wikipedia

Daniel Gibson Mar 3

@pervognsen @jplebreton
and at some point it was popular for gaming magazines to bundle a free game (when they still came with a CD/DVD)

Per Vognsen Mar 3

@Doomed_Daniel @jplebreton I think it's a complex topic. Second-hand sales and rentals and Steam sales are not intrinsically bad, but at an industrial scale they can definitely have a harmful effect on consumer price vs value perception. And in the home computer space there's always been piracy. I think there's a step-change when it gets industrialized, e.g. GameStop pushing "pre-owned" games instead of fresh copies.

Per Vognsen Mar 3

@Doomed_Daniel @jplebreton Regarding bundling free games with magazines in the home computer era, I mostly saw that with older, lower quality games but I do have some incredible memories of specific high-value games I got for free that way. E.g. one of my favorite CRPGs is Betrayal at Krondor and I only found out about it because the complete game came on a CD-ROM with a PC gaming magazine.

Daniel Gibson Mar 4

@pervognsen @jplebreton
IIRC often the full versions in gaming magazines were for publicity shortly before a sequel was released

I remember getting Gothic 2 that way (and enjoyed it very much), a pity Gothic 3 was so broken :-/

Daniel Gibson Mar 4

@pervognsen @jplebreton
True - I find it hard to draw a line too, but game pass *definitely* is far into the bad side, and Epic Store giving away games for free on a regular basis can't be good either.

I didn't perceive early Humble Bundle as a too devaluing, they only happened occasionally and included indie games that weren't "full price" in the first place and weren't brand new either.

Daniel Gibson Mar 4

@pervognsen @jplebreton
"I won't buy $game but wait until it ends up in HB" wasn't really a thing in my experience, "I'll wait for it to turn up in a Steam sale" absolutely was and is

Forbearance Mar 4

@Doomed_Daniel @pervognsen @jplebreton Where are we putting itch.io "pay want you want for 812 games to raise money to oppose fascism" bundles?

Per Vognsen Mar 4

@Forbearance @Doomed_Daniel @jplebreton I mean, I'm personally all in favor of itch bundles. And itch.io games face visibility issues and unlike many naive Steam hopefuls I don't think they're basing their entire life plan on commercial success and putting all their eggs in the indie basket. So it almost feels like a different category.

Per Vognsen Mar 4

@Forbearance @Doomed_Daniel @jplebreton I think the empirical litmus test is that you don't hear Gamers saying "I got 10 games for $10 on itch.io, so why should I pay $40 for this one game". But you hear variants of that refrain all the time from people who are comparing everything to a 75% discount Steam sale or GamePass.

Michael Eggers 🇺🇦🇪🇺Mar 3

@Doomed_Daniel @pervognsen @jplebreton Uh, Gold Games was so good.

Cory Birdsong Mar 3

@jplebreton I have to wonder how much broader economic stress plays into this. If you’re just trying to make rent and you hardly have time to play anyway, then it’s easy to imagine how people could end up just playing Fortnite instead of buying stuff.

@jplebreton overpriced shitty AAA games anybody? I have hatefully touched those the last 5 years ; indie games is where it is all happening.