Wealth doesn’t trickle down, but losses do. Sadly, AAA studios collapsing will affect indies’ abilities to get funding , so expect to feel some pain there too.

This is already being felt these last few years as many gaming publishers shifted to funding AI.

A cloud is a cloud in this case. I’m here stuck on the ground in the meantime.

Baby steps. You want looser piracy laws, you need to get people used to owning digital stuff.

If a format is “superior”, but is made “inferior”, is it truly “superior” to begin with?

We can daydream about ways to resell, keep, and lend our digital goods. But I’m more judging in the current day.

literally the only problem

hides all the benefits of ‘one thing’

Pretty much western development studios in a nutshell, sadly. Try to go for a model that maximizes engagement and hope the mass monetization comes from various forms of MTX. But lootboxes can’t be used anymore, so you’re stuck focusing on skins. But skins are still expensive to produce and can’t be put out fast (which is how mobile games get away with that).

So there’s big numbers in the beginning but not enough money coming in to justify the expensive production. Executives don’t let it cook on the market long enough and just shut it down early. Even though by all other metrics, it was a good game with potential to foster a new franchise/sub-franchise. No one wins. Its Multiversus all over again.

I don’t think we disagree. I’m just talking about how the sausage is made. Squeaky wheels get the grease.

Networking is always important. And those AAA studios probably have dedicated lines of support to Valve that can open up such deals way more easily than an indie trying to email support.

Valve also does try to highlight some successful indies, but that’s a small slice of indie pie. While every other AAA studio is that direct line gained from events, existing networks reaching out, etc.

It’s a thing. If you’re an inspiring indie dev, it’s hard numbers to let you know if you can work with these numbers. If you’re just a gamer, they probably don’t matter at all.

The 1% numbers makes me question by there aren’t more AA initiates out there. we don’t get many 5-10m budget games these days, but the typical AA game is (conservatively) making 15m dollars. So if you can turnournd a game on the level of Claire Obscur (which IIRC had a 10m dollar budget) in 4 years, there should be openings for potential success.

Guess it comes down to the lack of investors who care at that level (who wouldn’t just throw it at AI)

Given the way they estimate sales numbers, it’s probably too different a curve. I imagine there’s both a lot of bottom of the barrel adult games that still manage to get some sales off (as opposed to none for most non-adult games) and there’s a lower sales ceiling that still results in surprisingly strong revenue compared to a game with similar reviews.

ice cream flavor sales

Strawberry’s fallen on hard times. We need to seize the means of chocolate production and distribute the wealth among all our fellow flavors.

Would Pareto be ecstatic or rolling in his grave at this disparity?

It seems that’s partially taken into account:

New analysis of 99,206 Steam games illustrates just how extreme the economics can be on Valve’s PC gaming emporium

Over 8,000 paid games analyzed never received a single Steam review

This report also only looks at premium games, meaning free-to-play giants like Valve’s Counter-Strike are left out, as are “non-game software, adult-only titles and unreleased entries.” The list of 99,206 was selected from a base of 136,281.

The only caveat is that revenue is estimated, so there can be big swings in the data.

The standard multiplier here is 35, so this research assumes one Steam review is worth 35 sales at a game’s current listed price, though you can also use a more “conservative” 20 or “generous” 50 in the report’s impressive graphs.

Wish I could do that for the Switch. Or hell my dang TV remote. I never press that Netflix button on purpose. Hell, it seems manufactured to press those streaming buttons whenever I drop the remote.

I wish I could blame it all on these kinds of people. In reality it’s about 60% of the story or so. They’ve always been around but they weren’t this bold a decade ago.

A small part is the political climate over the last decade. That’s a topic worth its own encyclopedia one day, and games is affected as well.

A large part is that games just isn’t doing well financially right now. Because everyone in tech wants to invest in AI so there’s a lot less money in the space. Smaller or medium sized teams can’t get funding and less pitches get approved. Larger studios are “fine” but companies are using this time to cash out. Which is why you hear about Activision selling out to Microsoft and EA to Saudi Arabia. Layoffs at small companies happen because they need to (or companies simply shut down) , layoffs at large companies happen to make the number go up.

Last decent chunk of the problem is the landscape of games is changing. Converging more on “forever games” rather than traditional console experiences. This is an emerging problem that will get worse over the coming years, something even the consoles themselves are trying to shape itself around.

And to the people, not knowing your employees (or giving a damn to look them up) implies a structure where leadership is disconnected from the craftsmen that actually bring value to the company. Making leadership look out of touch, unrelatable, and outright crass.

Not to mention that he proves the writer correct in their accusation by admitting he does use AI and relishes in it.

Untitled Avatar: The Last Airbender title

That one was already cancelled, by the way.

the answer to your question is “K-shaped Economy”. Lot of people doing this are in fact doing way better than they were 4 years ago. Some of them are indeed taking out more debt to do this, but most haven’t felt the pain of this modern economy.

I would argue that Valve should’ve just have upgraded the Steam Deck and I find that a far more worthwhile device.

They still do plan making a Steam Deck 2. But given that the Steam Deck OLED also needed a 300 dollar price hike, it’s clear that it would have had a similar fate. IDK how many steam deck players being ready to pay 4 figures for a handheld.

( I say this owning an 800 dollar GPD Win 4).

well that makes the hiring or trial process much easier, no? I don’t think the problem here is “I can’t tell if my employee gives a fuck”.

And I can tell you that passion is not something lacking in the games industry.