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2024 Was the Year the Bottom Fell Out of the Games Industry
(www.wired.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2024
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Disclaimer: this is my opinion as an IT worker and dev, not fact. Please be constructive.
I feel with the folks losing their jobs or seeing their indie studio crash and burn.
That said, I feel like they’re starting to pay the price for letting a monopoly dictate game sales (as benevolent and popular this monopolist is, I know I will again be brigaded for this).
As another commenter said, the industry still tries to go ahead with triple or even quadruple A games, push hype and sell to underage gamers practically gambling games with hero faces.
Then there arent enough unions to hold companies to a standard because in the IT world as a whole, people are used to their privilege. „Trust me bro“ is still seen as a valid strategy in this business.
All while customers get put on pink glasses to make them oblivious to the fact that IT work is just a craft, like carpentry, but less known. The amount of buzz words and bullshit in the industry is appalling and needs to go, double time.
A dev should be judged by their ability to develop, not play corporate mindgames or „speak the lingo“.
While I agree with just about all of your points, there's one thing I'm not clear on. Who's the monopolist in your scenario? The console space has 3 competitors and on the PC side, you've got several more. I don't see any of the big PC or console companies dictating game development trends. That seems to me to come from the publishers chasing the next big thing, or trying to make their own version of the last big thing. The rest of what you said is spot on, though. We need stronger unions and we need to demystify what developers do. And we absolutely need to tell the tech bro types to fuck off and stop stinking up the place.
The monopolist in this case sells the games to the gamers. It is steam. You have practically no chance to sell games outside of steam and although there is good reason for it being popular, its not healthy.
But the barrier to entry for publishing a game on Steam is super-low, it's honestly dead simple. And even though Steam takes a sizeable cut, they do tons of work in exchange w.r.t. promotion, distribution, community management, the modding workshop, Steam Input, testing Steam Deck compatibility, etc..
For indies it's one of the easiest routes to publish a game. And given the relative success of indies on Steam, it seems to work quite well.
Although I agree that steam has done a lot for indies, the issue remains, no matter how many stans downvote me.
But then perhaps you could articulate what the exact issue is? Like, what ill effects is Steam being a very major player having on the gaming industry as a whole?
I don't understand, how is Steam good for Indies but bad for studios?