Oh gee! I wonder why is this happening?!

I guess we'll never know!

Anyway, let's release another copy-paste game at 90€/$ with 50€/$ in dlcs and another collector edition with some plastic toy for 300!

Less money to buy games, cost of games go up, quality still crap, riddled with micro transactions. Why buy a game when it comes out when you can wait to buy it on a sale while you play your backlog and by the time you buy the game it will be the best version because they had time to fix it up, almost never to the degree it should be but still the best it's going to get

Not just Gen Z lol. People don't have money, games are a luxury, luxuries are the first to go when you need to stretch your cash. Not that complicated.

Modern games fucking suck. Start making good shit if you want people to buy them.

Also fuck the useless malware anticheats. Do it server side if you want to be even mildly effective or fuck off.

1. Do they have money? I don't have money.

2. Modern games from major devs fucking suck.

From my perspective as a millennial, people are running out of time and energy too.

Like, I know a couple, both working, no kids, avid and techy gamers who know to play stuff like KCDII, yet they mostly plop down for YouTube at the end of the day. A VG or longer form TV is too draining, and too long.

They're spending their time scrolling. The GenZ equivalent of television. GenZ is also getting older. The median age is over college graduate age. They're simply working more or doing other things besides video games. Not everyone is a Paradox gamer. I'm sure the GenZ Paradox gamers, PC gamers, and FPS/sports enthusiasts are all still buying the same games. But the people growing out of it might buy 1-2 per year and play ~10 hrs per month. The "youngest GenZ" is about 13 years old now.

I also didn't really buy many games until I had proper salary. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Some of gen-Z are still pretty young and they are just poor students...

Judging by the comments, reading the article seems to be a lost art. Here's the image for y'all:

It's very specifically about 18-24 year olds, compared to last year, with video games seeing the steepest decrease.

You can stop complaining about games being soulless, unless you want to claim that wasn't a problem last year. Well, you can, but it's unrelated then. Compared to last year, this age group has felt the need to cut back at everything more so than anyone else.

Here's the thread mentioned in the article. Suspected reason is restarting of student loan payments and difficult job market.

They don’t come out with original work that gets people interested and/or they enshittify the franchise. If GreatGame was good, we’re on GreatGame VI with microtransactions, paid skins, fortnite play, no immersive single player campaign, and ads with no real change to anything else.

Like others said, it's not just Gen-Z.

Funny enough, the main reason I'm spending far less is not the shitty economy, but rather the gaming industry's push to kill physical copies.

I used to buy a lot of physical games at full price because they would be much harder to find later on, but if I'm forced to go with a digital copy this is no longer an issue, so I just let them sit on my wishlist until they're massively discounted.

there are also almost no new games worth even looking at anymore. There are some, but they are quite rare

Could it be that the economy fucking sucks?

Nope, clearly it's our fault for not just going out and buying stuff.

Why buy a new game when you have no money and your backlog will take years to go through?

Y'all, this market is beyond saturated. And the AI gaming people are flOOOoding the space with more and more stuff.

In terms of a fun way to spend an hour or two, or a few go-to games, there's unlimited options, many free or free enough. Meanwhile, everyone churning out titles expects full attention and wishlist and dropping $50 on them for simply existing.

Well, gee, I wonder why. Not like their money isn't going more for necessities after all

As a millennial, the games today are mostly shit. I’m currently playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and it’s amazing. I had a blast with DK Bananza as well. Deltarune was nice too. But before that? AstroBot. And before that? I don’t know. Usually I play a demo of a game, if that’s not available I pirate it and play for half an hour or so. If I like it, I buy it. If I don’t like it, I won’t buy it and won’t play any further. And on top of that, a lot of games released today are just remakes of games that themselves released on PS3/Xbox360/PC. I mean "The Last of us remastered"??? That game was released on PS4, so I can just pop it in my PS5 and play it. But now the devs want me to pay $70 to have it a tiny bit better looking?

"Lost Soul Aside" will release later this month. I remember years ago when I first heard of this game, made by a single person (who now got a team of developers from Sony). And I will definitely get that. No demo required.

The whole world is cutting back on everything everywhere as no one wants to be left short if this global economic craziness gets even more out of hand.

and indie games are cheaper and better

Did industry try to raise prices even more? Maybe higher prices is what's missing for gaming industry to blossom /s

I think SOME of it has to do with AAA being dogshit, but I think a lot of it is actually that they just play roblox. I have been told "why would I buy peak when roblox has this mountain climbing game for free?"

My son stopped playing some of the latest stuff because of the crazy levels of anti cheating intrusionware. Better mental health not playing competitive multiplayer too.

Yeah, I remember being in my 20s too. Too bad they are going through the same shit we did. are we getting another "this is a trauma response" generation?

Maybe on bad triple A games

Steam's indie games tho, gen Z are spending a shit ton there

Games were once created by gamers, who had a clear vision. It since became a soulless business and people notice. I think twice before opening my wallet now. I don't pre-order, don't spend more on digital gimmick editions and wait for reviews, first. Usually I can wait for sales. The industry's problems are homemade. But once in a while I find rare gems like Forgive me Father. And I'm happy with that.

Everyone is.

I don't buy new releases anymore.

Why?

Cause the prices are getting stupid. Cause its all digital downloads with no physical product. Cause my "ownership" can be revoked at any time by the platforms whims or the platforms shutdown.

What happened to digital downloads being cheaper, anyway? Thats the promise we were sold 10+ years ago. That by sacrificing physical products, Publishers/Devs wouldnt have to pay for printing, manufacturing, shipping, storage, etc, so they'd be able to sell AAA new releases for 30 dollars, and Pub/Dev would still make more money.

And now we're supposed to be paying 60, 70, 80 dollars or more, for these digital download games.. that we don't even own? And because they have no product on the shelves, prices never come down either. Sure, you might find a sale like on steam or something.. but those sales pale in comparison to what they were 5, 10 years ago

Fuck that. Amazing how the only promise fulfilled on moving to digital download was that pubs/devs would get more money.. and they get that by skyrocketing the costs, not because of the sacrifices we made to give up boxes, disks, manuals, and ownership

Gen X, can't actually remember the last time I bought a game.

Suikoden 1 & 2 on PS5? I think that was it.

I used to buy games all the time, but I won't pay for a digital release I don't own. Avowed? Digital only. Looked for Expedition 33, couldn't find it on physical.

I'm not leaving gaming, gaming is leaving me.

I do buy games from time to time, but 2 of my most played games on Steam are just free games. OpenTTD and vivid/stasis.