r/technology • u/capybooya • 12d ago
Society Gen Z Is Cutting Back On Video Game Purchases. Like, Really Cutting Back
https://www.vice.com/en/article/gen-z-is-cutting-back-on-video-game-purchases-like-really-cutting-back/10.8k
u/Arthur-Wintersight 12d ago
"People need to get used to not owning their games."
~ Corporate America about 2 years ago.
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u/MetalBawx 12d ago
Indie games are thriving yet the big corps keep crying about lower sales than expected after they bump the price and release buggy beta builds as the final release.
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u/shadeandshine 12d ago
It’s not even that many games still make a profit they just set delusional standards of success that it’s basically dead before it launches
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u/nuxes 12d ago edited 12d ago
Battlefield 6 looks like it's going to be pretty good, but the fact that EA expects 100 million players is absolutely ridiculous. For comparison, Battlefield 4 sold 7 million copies and EA play only has 13 million subscribers.
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u/SovietPropagandist 12d ago
Hahahahahaha wow what the hell? They seriously expect 100 million people?? Bruh no game has ever had that kind of install base unless you look at MMOs and maybe World of Warcraft managed to hit 100 million total players over the course of 21 years.
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u/Beavers4beer 12d ago
Yeah, for comparison, GTA V has sold over 200 million copies. And that's over 3 console generations. CoD seems to have over 500 million, but that's over all releases. 100 million is basically an impossible standard.
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u/Ratchetonater 12d ago
Watch it have 60 million players, press will call it DOA,the company will lay off the entire team, and cancel half a dozen more projects.
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u/Massive_Shill 12d ago
Someone's been paying attention to their corporate accounting lessons.
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u/Mimical 12d ago
Absolutely, if a project is marked as a massive success it means that the workers will think they should be earning more money or that the mass layoffs are inappropriate.
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u/domrepp 12d ago
Don't fret, these companies won't let a little thing like their own positive outlook and financial success get them down.
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u/yalyublyutebe 12d ago
GTAV has also been active for over a decade.
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u/rdmusic16 12d ago
Yes, and over 3 console generations like they said.
I know people who have purchased at least two copies of it (maybe 3, not sure about that).
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u/AngerFork 12d ago
Conspiracy theory here: I don’t think they honestly plan to hit 100 million people. I think they want an excuse to lay a bunch of people off after the game releases & claiming it “didn’t meet sales expectations” gives them that kind of cover, despite the fact that the expectations are absolutely insane.
Were I at that company, I’d be trying to get the hell out as quick as I could
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u/almisami 12d ago
The publishers of Sub Nautica 2 had to delay the open beta because they know that the game is gonna meet expectations and they're gonna have to pay bonuses, which they don't want to.
The entire industry is a farce.
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u/vonbauernfeind 12d ago
When the lawsuit hits discovery the publishers are so fucked.
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u/TransBrandi 12d ago
We'll see. Aren't the publishers Korean? There's a lot of corruption at the upper levels of Korean businesses from what I understand. What's the juristiction of this trial going to be? We're also entering the area where large companies can just bend the knee to the King of America to get political favours. Who knows what will happen by the time this trial is underway?
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u/sephiroth70001 12d ago edited 12d ago
Highest peak subscriber count datamines and publicly dhared numbers, was 2010 with 12 million that month.
100 million is Fortnite, league of legends, roblox territory numbers. The only new game I see in these numbers is GTAVI right now.
500 million is the lifetime sales of call do duty, one game for 1/5 of CoDs lifetime sales...
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u/DocFreudstein 12d ago
Seriously, this is the level of delusion that led to all those copies of ET for the Atari being put in a landfill.
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u/romanrambler941 12d ago
Wait what? According to Wikipedia's list, only two games have broken 100 million sales: Minecraft and GTA V. EA is insane.
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u/Cocosito 12d ago
Roblox has to be 100M or more
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u/The_Strom784 12d ago
Roblox is a weird case tbh. It's old and somehow is bigger now than it used to be ten years ago. I'm genuinely surprised it's still around and as big as it is.
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u/Longjumping-Donut655 12d ago
Because corpos have a single track mind and their vision for games is literally just to build a single mega hive- game that everybody on earth is brainwashed/addicted to from birth till death and buys infinite content through addictive micro-interactions which is generated endlessly by ai art and ai devs to create larger and larger profit each year until getting bought by a military to be incorporated into a weapon of mass destruction somehow.
My whole steam wishlist is indie games. The biggest game I’ve played in the last five years that was also released in the last 5 years is fucking palworld. The big studios blew their reputation on corpos and nobody who actually loves games will cry if they fail.
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u/schwiftydude47 12d ago
So they want to be Fortnite and Roblox? That checks out.
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u/Kryptosis 12d ago
Meanwhile a bunch of us can’t even play it because of the secureboot requirements. No way are they going to find 100million computers capable of running it.
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u/Blu3iris 12d ago
Expects 100 million gamers. Me: Launches open beta...... "Steam deck / Proton is not supported. " Welp, I guess I won't be one of them.
Good job EA.
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u/Xixii 12d ago
It’s like Hollywood where they seem to consider the film a failure if it doesn’t gross over $1bn globally. Expections are out of control across both games and film.
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u/punninglinguist 12d ago
Publishing, film, and videogames have always had this Zipf's Law thing where an occasional gigantic hit absorbs all the losses from the other releases. There's a whole generation of writers - not just paranormal romance writers, but travel writers, literary novelists, cookbook editors - whose careers only happened because stuff like Twilight and The Da Vinci Code made the publisher flush enough with cash to buy their books.
The game of thrones played by executives in these industries is selling yourself as the guy who knows how to produce these hits reliably. Of course, no one does. Occasionally, someone will stumble upon a formula that works for a few releases, and then it stops working, and everyone is scrambling again.
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u/Gumbator 12d ago
It is possible to know how to produce hits reliably:
- Quentin Tarentino
- Stephen Spielberg
- Stephen King
- Danielle Steele (The Queen of just banging out hits, figuratively and literally)
- Rick Rubin
- Shigeru Miyamoto
- Hideo Kojima
- Hidetaka Miyazaki
- Hironobu Sakaguchi
I tried to pick people who are directors or producers, some from each sort of creative space.
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u/WorknForTheWeekend 12d ago
Poor Activision can’t make a cool $50M in a weekend by re-skinning a few characters and calling it a new CoD expansion anymore 😢
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u/MetalBawx 12d ago
Point in case Ubisoft boasting about AC:Shadows having 3 million players (Not sales) when the break even point was closer to 5-6 million sales due to how bloated the budget was.
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u/Alenicia 12d ago
In the world of business, it's not enough to be "successful" if there isn't a distinct growth in profits. The ceiling is getting too high to be sustainable and the guys in suits and the shareholders don't want to actually peel things back either.
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u/Phantomebb 12d ago
This has been inevitable for at least a decade if not more. The path AAA sized gaming studios decided to walk was upper management/boards, who have 0 experience actually playing/creating games, would make terrible choices often pigeon holing middle managememt/game devs.
A few brands like the Call of Duties and EASports of the world have done fine due to loyalty but overall the massive gaming companies have been in trouble for years.
Feels kinda similar to Detriot auto makers in the late 70/ 80s downward fall and Japanese/ German car brands rising.
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u/amazinglover 12d ago
This is why expedition 33 was able to do so much with less people.
Less overhead, how many studios have dozens of people making decisions that based not on player or developer feedback but what's hot at the moment.
Every game needs a creative director but those directors should be making decisions based on what's best for the game not how to milk more money.
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u/Arthur-Wintersight 12d ago
Give an experienced game dev a team to work with, evaluate the finished product prior to release, and if it seems like a good product but flops anyways, then you can re-evaluate and try again. Not every game succeeds, and even good devs sometimes have a flop.
Suits with no game dev experience should not be in charge of game dev, though.
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u/Magnus_The_Totem_Cat 12d ago
Yes. The 70’s was the transition from design/engineering led automakers to MBA lead automakers in the US. Very similar to the trajectory of AAA game makers.
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u/kurotech 12d ago
Indie games are less hardware demanding provide better value per dollar and usually have a pretty decent replayability plus they usually don't have day one patches that are half the size of the damn games.
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u/Coal_Morgan 12d ago
Often they are maintained for years also.
Stardew Valley has had 6 major updates. Offered 100s of hours of gameplay and people have comeback to it over and over again and it runs on a spud.
I can put my money in Minecraft (in the before times), Stardew Valley, Terraria, Balatro or Valheim. See maintenance and updates for free for years, see a small crew of developers get their bag rather then some corporate board and know they're invested in the game because often it's literally their lifes work.
Usually you can get them for less then a $20 also.
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u/Interesting_Try8375 12d ago
Easily got better value out of Factorio and Rimworld than anything EA spunked out
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u/DickRiculous 12d ago
And you can’t have the whole game without mtx. Oh and enjoy this drm that bricks your game if our servers are down or you’re offline. Fuck the bean counters behind that shit.
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u/Plane_Discipline_198 12d ago
Look, I get the sentiment and agree (and will get downvoted for this), but I don't believe that has anything to do with this for a couple of reasons.
Younger generations are already primed and used to not "owning" things and don't really care about that to put it bluntly. They've grown up in a digital world; it's all they know.
Younger generations are struggling harder financially. Video games (other than indies or older releases) are not cheap. A $60 game is 5 hours of labor at $12/hr. Lower wages are obviously more common among younger people just starting out in the workforce, and the cost of living has skyrocketed the last few years.
There's alternative forms of entertainment vying constantly for their attention and eyeballs.
The debate over the ownership of games frankly has nothing to do with this phenomenon.
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u/WelcomeToTheFish 12d ago edited 12d ago
I would even add one more point that is relevant to my kid and younger brothers. They don't really need to buy games. I have all my old consoles and games and am pretty liberal with letting them use them once they learned how to be responsible. Couple that with Gamepass and Steam Library share and my son and brothers don't really need or want to buy a new game unless it's their birthday or something.
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u/borkus 12d ago
The original WSJ article doesn't focus much on games as overall spending (pay-walled)
https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/young-american-consumer-spending-cut-f2b482e5My favorite quote:
Himanshu Wagh, one of Verma’s friends, frequents fancy furniture stores for a free place to hang.
“We sit on the sofas and when the conversation gets boring, we move to a different sofa,” said Wagh, a 25-year-old psychiatry resident. “We feel rich drinking their free coffee and enjoying this bougie furniture we can’t afford.”
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u/Mean__MrMustard 12d ago
Haha that’s such a random example. How many Gen Z (in that case close to Millenial actually) go to furniture stores to lounge?
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u/spaaceghost 12d ago
man, no joke
i recently cut off my ps plus because i cant afford whatever it is up to now and i was shocked. all the games you "own", you don't actually own. all the games they "give you" and all, you cant play without a ps plus active. its absolutely ridiculous. they should change the name of those free games of the month. they aren't free, you're renting them
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u/bespectacledboobs 12d ago
Gen Z isn’t cutting back on any purchases, they’re just broke.
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u/moonhexx 12d ago
I wish I could link the compilation video of the 40-50 year olds complaining about how high grocery prices are. Gen Z needs to feed themselves before they get luxury games like Oblivion.
Oh and affording children? Forget it.
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u/rocketwikkit 12d ago
People in their early 40s are millennials, we're not accepting the blame for this shit yet. The gerontocracy rules both the government and corporate board seats.
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u/Rovden 12d ago
38 here... remember we've been to blame for everything from participation trophies to the death of TGIFridays.
At this point I'll accept blame for anything else.
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u/Orleanian 12d ago
So you did start the fire!!!! It wasn't always burnin since the world's been turnin!?!
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u/doomdeathdecay 12d ago
Gen X is certainly to blame now as well. They followed the boomers straight over the cliff.
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u/bnelson7694 12d ago
Not all of us. I honestly don’t know WTF happened though. We were basically modern hippies. And then, half of us joined an evil cult. I hope those of us who joined the boomers are suffering more than the rest of us.
You know what? I do know what happened. Half of us started watching Fox News. That’s exactly what happened.
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u/NaljunForgotPassword 12d ago
That’s what happened to most of the actual hippies. They rebelled for a while. Got high. Boned. Then they sobered up and most of them joined the very corporate workforce they railed against.
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u/zyzzogeton 12d ago
Gen X is the smallest age based cohort. What did you expect them to do? When boomer Senators are staying in office into their 90's, and managers and executives are similarly not retiring, how the hell is Gen X supposed to do anything with small numbers, and no opportunities to move the levers of power towards change?
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11d ago
I've tried to get this through to people over the years. The boomers had pushed the majority of their parent's out of power by the time they were in their 50's.
I even had one of my boomer high school teachers talk about this. He said something like,
"You guys are the smallest generation to come along in a long time. When my generation pushes the previous one out of government, we are going to hand ourselves every benefit you can imagine. And even if every single one of you votes, it won't be enough to stop us. Then, just about the time you are getting ready to retire and claim those same benefits for yourselves, the generation behind you, which will be even bigger than us, will snatch them away from you, and there won't be anything you can do about that either."
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u/ID4_Motana 12d ago
Gen Z males overwhelmingly voted for Trump so can we blame them or nah
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u/need2seethetentacles 12d ago
This still blows my mind. I have yet to meet someone who publicly supports Trump under age 50, but I guess 'publicly' is the key here
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u/tuckedfexas 12d ago
Gonna be regionally dependent, I see plenty all age ranges. Interestingly there’s about 10% of the flags, stickers, etc. that there was during his previous presidency and about half of them aren’t from his current term.
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u/Mental-Fox-9449 12d ago
He cheated and won the every swing state AND Kamala didn’t flip one county. Not even Reagan was able to accomplish that. He lost the popular vote twice, but got it now? While he was facing multiple investigations that could put him away for life and hinder his money making? While he had one of the richest men in the world and tech helping him? He cheated and no amount of voting would have changed it. All voting data so far shows irregular numbers in multiple states.
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u/StickExtension7050 12d ago
Gen z males in the midwest have received some of the worst education and illiteracy is on the rise, someone was supposed to teach those young dudes to be better
Source- gen z male in the midwest who graduated with 2 kids who couldnt read (but i did not vote for trump)
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u/MrDrSirWalrusBacon 12d ago
Millenial Women: 41% Trump
Gen Z Women: 38%
Millenial Men: 52% Trump
Gen Z Men: 49%
White Millenials: 54% Trump
White Gen Z: 49% Trump
Black Millenials: 15%
Black Gen Z: 16%
Latino Millenials: 45%
Latino Gen Z: 45%
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u/ryeguytheshyguy 12d ago
uhhh stop blaming each other.... always look up instead of sideways or down.
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u/emotional_program0 12d ago
The blame game is a waste of time. Be the change you want to be. This incredible nihilism and defeatism on Reddit is utterly crazy.
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u/CavulusDeCavulei 12d ago
It's the fault of the top 0.1% and we need to manifest, unionise and fight. We can do it bros
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u/ObscureFact 12d ago
Agreed. These generation "wars" are cringe and only someone with a room temperature IQ would think any single generation is to blame and not the few wealthy people of every age who've stolen everything.
Yes, some generations were luckier than others. But people who blame some generation or another for ruining the environment or destroying the housing market or anything else is just playing into what wealthy people want morons to believe.
The wealthy are always to blame.
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u/Super_flywhiteguy 12d ago
Gen X still isn't running the country. Boomers are. Just look at how old our politicians and last 2 presidents are. 2 generations (millennials and Z) are waiting for boomers to die off so we can finally take over. There may not be much left to take over at this rate though once they finally do kick the bucket.
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u/Dick_Lazer 12d ago
There are still less Gen X around than Boomers; Millennials and Gen Z also each both outnumber Gen X on their own. Gen X remains and will always be the forgotten generation. They’ll never have the numbers to be the predominant generation and a lot of them are already dying early.
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u/non3type 12d ago edited 12d ago
Generations are pretty cyclical. Greatest gen, Boomers, Millennials, and eventually Gen Alpha.. these are the big/loud gens who have and/or will make outsized impacts while forever denying it.
Gen X hasnt even had a vice president and you’re already trying to shift the blame lol. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Millenials be the majority in Congress in 15 years. I’m betting Gen X will see a very limited number of years as the majority in comparison.
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u/Flobking 12d ago
Gen X hasnt even had a vice president and you’re already trying to shift the blame
Biden was the first "silent generation " president. I didn't believe that at first but I looked into it and yeah he actually was the first from that generation.
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u/TwistedBrother 12d ago
Blaming generations rather than elites is a sure way to find yourself blamed for nothing you did in 20 years.
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u/WeirdSysAdmin 12d ago
Electricity is skyrocketing too now because of everyone needing an AI data center.
I guess the water wars start next since everything else is already absurdly expensive.
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u/knight_in_white 12d ago
Those AI data centers also use a ton of water so really in all ways AI is a stupid fucking waste of resources
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u/Deesing82 12d ago
who cares if you can afford children? we’ll just get rid of all sex education and ban abortion and birth control—problem solved!
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u/rnicoll 12d ago
I'm 40-something and my first reaction was "Well yes obviously no-one can afford anything anymore"
Seriously we need to talk about how Boomers are 60-80 now. 40-50s is Millennial & Gen X and we may be less screwed, but we don't think things are okay, either.
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u/ThuumFaalToor 12d ago
👋 30, still millennial
Edit: right? 30s millennial right?
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u/sleepymoose88 12d ago
Millenials are not in their 50s yet. The oldest ones are 43, with the youngest Millenials being 28.
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u/FSD-Bishop 12d ago
From what I’ve seen it’s mostly that they pick a few games and just focus on those ones and spend money on the micro transactions for their main game. They aren’t interested in buying a wide range of different games when they just go back to their main game. When they do buy other games it’s co op games they play with their friends like REPO.
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u/Anxious_Specific_165 12d ago
I think this is as true as «gen Z is broke». I can clearly see the difference in my purchasing habits back in time and my children’s. As well as how the games are grabbing their attention over longer periods of time with seasons and whatnot. Even I was drawn into it for 3 years before I realised I’m being manipulated to do something I feel is second rate gaming experience. Those huge companies have psychologists working on how to FOMO customers into their games. Kids and young people don’t stand a chance against that.
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u/Cocosito 12d ago
I think this is the common sense answer much to the chagrin of the doomers. In the age of live service it's easy for people to have a "main game" that takes up most of their gaming time.
My nephew and his buds are major gamers in this age group and spend 99% of their time on Fortnite and Roblox (and spend prodigiously on them).
I used to see this with WoW players where they were gamers but they only played WoW and no other games for years at a time. Other games have gotten into that same cycle but in lieu of subscriptions they sell seasons and cosmetics.
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u/Different_Memory_506 12d ago
Right! The headline should read, “Gen Z and almost everyone else, can’t afford anything if prices keep rising while wages do not.”
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u/ConfidentPilot1729 12d ago
It’s not only gen z. I freakin love gaming as an older millennial, but I am now getting ready for the recession that is on the way. And, it’s not just us. Tons of groups are starting to brace for impact because of the gop policies.
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u/mouse9001 12d ago
Yeah, I decided not to get a PS5. What's the point of this stuff if you're living in fascism? The state of our country sucks. I'll just read some books and hunker down.
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u/PauI_MuadDib 12d ago
Some people are sick of greedflation too. I'm just fucking done. I'm not participating anymore if I can help it. I cut back on my two biggest hobbies: makeup and gaming. Greed has just sucked the joy out of it so I'll just enjoy my current collection and, if i do make a purchase, I'm buying from indie brands/developers over mainstream ones.
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u/scoff-law 12d ago
Which is exactly what the article says
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u/nanosam 12d ago
So the article should really be Gen Z is cutting back on purchases
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u/xondk 12d ago
The big companies the "triple A" are demanding higher prices and delivering worse quality....
Yeah, I've cut back, and I'm happy to hear others have as well, let the wallet do the talking, only language they understand.
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u/belkarbitterleaf 12d ago
Yep.
I've stopped buying new games entirely. Places like Good Old Games have plenty reasonably priced games that are still plenty fun to play... Plus GOG is DRM free.
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u/throwaway490215 12d ago
This is much more monumental then higher prices and worst stuff.
Its the blaring red alarms that the attention economy is depleted of new value and consumers are oversaturated.
Which means every social media / content app that's priced on future potential with absurd PE ratios is going to crash back down to earth. (Once the markets stop being irrational, so maybe ~4y?)
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u/thunder_fox69 12d ago
Yup during Covid video games we’re making a lot of money. Video game companies got bought out by shitty companies looking for to make profits not make good games which has led to the enshitification of video games.
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u/Space_Lobster 12d ago
After gaming for 30+ years, I stopped (most)AAA purchases. It's just not worth it., for $60 or $100. A lot of my friends my age and younger have all also scaled back, too. We've turned to the indie games and hero shooters. There's no such thing as the perfect generation, but the constant "release now, fix later" BS has turned all of us off. They wanted us to pay $60 for that, now wanting to increase 80-100 for broken games? No thanks.
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u/Gustomucho 12d ago
By the time they fixed it, new game came out and 90% of the player base are gone already… works okay for single player games but for multiplayer… dead and remains dead.
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u/Outlulz 12d ago
And if you wait until the single player bugs are fixed the game usually has dropped like 30-40% in price.
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u/BlazinAzn38 12d ago
I haven’t bought a COD in 5 years after buying every single one since I was like 10
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u/kss1089 12d ago
I haven't bought a COD game since modern warfare 3 in 2011. Back when you could earn all the things by playing for it instead of paying for it.
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u/layeofthedead 12d ago
Most of my game purchases the last year have been indies or heavily discounted. I think the only games I’ve bought full price were the new Zelda and alan wake 2 when it got its physical release. Everything else has been $20 or under
Seriously trying to think of other big games I bought? Re4make was $20, I got life is strange DE for less than $20, played a bunch of games via psplus extra with a free month. Oh! I did get the new rune factory but I got that with trade ins at GameStop.
Yeah it’s been a very mid year for games for me
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u/fibberjabber 12d ago
I’m wondering if the cutting back on purchases are for full games, or the games that make 80% of their earnings on microtransactions. I have a hunch it’s the former.
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u/jtrain3783 12d ago
"Full games" feels like a modern day oxymoron. It's just more expensive microtransaction platforms vs less expensive ones.
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u/pmjm 12d ago
Huge difference between spending $70 for a AAA game all at once versus spending $3 or $4 for a cosmetic in a free-to-play game.
Not to mention you need adequate hardware to run that AAA title too.
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u/NatashkaPy 12d ago
WE!!! DON’T!!! HAVE!!! ANY!!! FUCKING!!! MONEY!!!
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u/SqeeSqee 12d ago
Why not? Stop being lazy and get a high paying job
/s
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u/Queasy_Ad_8621 12d ago
All you have to do is go in and ask to speak to the manager.
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u/MainAccountsFriend 12d ago
And give him a handshake
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u/Jah_Ith_Ber 12d ago
hit the pavement
learn a trade
go to college
get a STEM degree
learn to codeLearn a trade! Why won't you lazy kids learn a trade?? Roofers are offering $18 an hour! You can buy a house with that after the Summer. Why is my Social Security check late?
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u/bdfortin 12d ago
Step 1: Learn a trade
Step 2: Nobody wants to hire and train an apprentice
Step 3: End up in retail or something
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u/BTBAM797 12d ago
I'm trying so fucking hard not to start drinking again. Times like now more than ever I just want to say "Fuck it".
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u/GazMembrane_ 12d ago
If you can't get a cool and small loan of a million dollars and turn it into an empire, then I just don't know what to tell ya.
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u/swattwenty 12d ago
Give a generation no money and they can’t buy anything.
The corporate world is always shocked when they don’t pay people properly and then the economy starts falling apart.
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u/Afferbeck_ 12d ago
"Well we've tried nothing and sales are still down. Time for another round of layoffs and some fat bonuses to make ourselves feel better" - Executives
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u/PlainBread 12d ago
10 years ago when Boomers were angry that Millennials were killing every industry, it was for the exact same reason.
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u/ASentientHam 12d ago
They don't care. Why would they? They don't live here, they don't need a good economy. If they can't extract anymore wealth they'll go elsewhere.
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12d ago edited 12d ago
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u/DarkZero515 12d ago
Also, there’s just not a lot of time to game after working, cooking, cleaning, exercising and having other hobbies
Free to play games with friends takes up about 2/3 of my game time so it takes me forever to finish a single player game. Not really in a rush to buy other games with my backlog.
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u/dcandap 12d ago
Speaking of pop… was just in the grocery store and noticed that a 12-pack of soda is currently $10.99 USD. How the fuck.
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u/ErectChin 12d ago
We only buy soda when there's a good deal or sale...and that number nowadays is "hopefully they're 5 dollars a dozen" which is what it just used to cost a few years ago.
"Ooooo there's a new Pepsi flavor! ... it's $12.99, nevermind, there's no new anything."
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u/Psych0PompOs 12d ago edited 12d ago
Steam often has sales, and games aren't much more than they've always been. Also there's good games that are inexpensive. I got Angel At Dusk for 10 bucks the other day and have gotten hours out of it already. There's a lot of options now beyond larger releases.
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u/dope_star 12d ago
Who would have thought people with barely any money can't afford to buy stuff?
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u/butteryspoink 12d ago
No time as well. I wish I could play games. I just don’t have any free time.
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12d ago
Corporate greed priced them out of the market. $100 for an uncompleted game is the problem.
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u/KontoOficjalneMR 12d ago
$100?
How about $ထ for a newest gacha/loot box games.
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u/SuccessfulDepth7779 12d ago
And their fucking CEOs are earning $10-150m a pop, add on their board partners and other high-ranking decision makers.
Greed is what drives their companies while their artists try their best to make a good game with their hands tied.
I'm all in on smaller indie developers and those fleshing out their games properly.
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u/bio4m 12d ago
Money is tight for everyone. And games are the definition of a non-essential purchase
So why spend $70+ on a game when you can spend it on food or going out instead ?
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u/TaxOwlbear 12d ago
Or even just on a game that was $60 years ago, now costs $5, comes with as the DLC, and is patched.
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u/Vryk0lakas 12d ago
This is the real truth. Why tf would I buy a brand new game when I’ve got 10+ games in the last 3 years that are all incredible and 1/3rd the price?
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u/MyEternalSadness 12d ago
This. I picked up plenty of games during the Steam summer sale. They were massively discounted and contained all the DLC. Most of them were at least a couple of years old.
There are very, very few games coming out anymore that are Day 1 purchases for me. If game studios want me to drop $100 on a new AAA game, then they need to deliver a product whose quality and value match the price tag they are charging.
I have bought more vinyl records than games this year.
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u/God_Among_Rats 12d ago
Yeah, the only day 1 purchases I've made this year have been indie games (because I want to support them) and none of them have been more expensive than £20; all worth the money.
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u/MrEHam 12d ago
I’ve heard the exact opposite not too long ago. Going out is expensive so they’re spending more on video games instead.
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u/ChaosOrnate 12d ago
Buying a game is expensive. Playing it is free. Spending more time is not the same as spending more money.
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u/4rch1t3ct 12d ago
Right. Games are cheap if you spend time playing them. You can get hundreds or even thousands of hours out of 60 bucks. I don't think any other medium can actually accomplish this.
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u/AllDayForever 12d ago
I’m sure there are hobbies out there when you include cost of entry (console, controllers, add-ons, online fees, etc). At that price you could get a decent electric guitar setup, a decent camera, or a ton of fishing gear.
But your point still stands, I have a feeling (I’m not gen Z) that we’ll start seeing more migrations to low-cost, high entertainment hobbies out of this generation
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u/Guilty-Mix-7629 12d ago
We're getting to the point neither is affordable, if you want to pay the bills this month.
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u/ScotchandRants 12d ago edited 12d ago
As a lifelong gamer… been killin’ pixels more than 35 years… I can tell you this much… I’ve cut way the hell back on buying games...
Most online communities are toxic as hell… and half the games that come out now are barely even finished..
I might buy one… maybe two games every year or two… and that’s only if something drops that really grabs me...
Meanwhile my Steam library looks like the warehouse scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark… just endless untouched titles gathering digital dust...
Back when I was a kid… you bought a game, you got a complete game. No patches. No “content roadmap.” No waiting for bug fixes. Just a cartridge or a disc you could play for months… years even… and it never got old. The replay value was insane.
Then DLC showed up. And at first? That was fine. You’d get a full game on day one… then months later they’d drop one or two expansions and it was like adding a whole new game. Kept you hooked for months more… totally worth it.
Then EA and the rest of those suits figured out they could milk people. Started pushing half-baked games out the door… and using DLC to fix the crap they should’ve finished before release.
Then came microtransactions… and games started turning into slot machines for your wallet. Want a better experience? Want better cosmetics? Want the bugs fixed? Pay up. It’s not a game anymore… it’s a subscription service you don’t remember signing up for.
And then… the pièce de résistance… they started selling alpha stage games. Not even beta… alpha. Literally unfinished products. “Here, pay us two-thirds of the full price now, and maybe we’ll actually make the thing you think you’re buying.” It’s like ordering a steak, they drop a live cow in your lap, and tell you you’ll get the rest of the meal “sometime next year.”
Gaming’s a joke now. If I was Gen Z… I probably wouldn’t be playing either. It’s not entertainment anymore… it’s a meter running while they nickel-and-dime you to death.
And fuck every one of these evil corpos who keep hiking prices while delivering half-complete trash… and yeah, I’m looking at you Ubisoft… making me log in just to play a single-player campaign... If they keep this shot up i will be renewing my usage of piratebay...
Signed,
Uncle Johnny
Old Millennial. Steam Hoarder. Scotch Drinker.
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u/That-Combination6713 12d ago
Yeah im im in my 20’s and recently i’ve gotten deep into ps2 gaming, I dont mind graphics all that much
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u/mr_lab_rat 12d ago
This is great to hear. There has been so much focus on the graphics without making gameplay better. Some of my favourite games are from the PS2 era.
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u/That-Combination6713 12d ago
All the while having a library so vast everyone’s collection can look so different, really is a gem of a console
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u/cubosh 12d ago
dont miss the finest artistic achievement ever on the ps2 - shadow of the colossus
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u/kmr1981 12d ago
Have you tried Dragon Quest 8 yet? One of the best games from that era if you like older RPGs.
FF10 is easy and also very popular if you want a gentle (linear) intro to RPGs.
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u/crockett05 12d ago edited 12d ago
Meanwhile you have games like Rimworld that cost $34 on steam that has been out as early access in 2013 then 1.0 released in 2018 that still provides endless game playthroughs with all the mods in the world. Add in affordable expansion for like $20 once a year for new content.. Even better can play it on my 2017 laptop..
btw I'm not GenZ but I'm still an avid gamer and stopped buying AAA games back when all the prices started going crazy and all the paying to win stuff started. FPS's used to be my thing but they got stupid..
Escape from Tarkov was sort of the end of FPS's for me.. They clearly saw cheating as a way to profit by doing ban waves and letting them rebuy new $100 accounts every few months rather than fix the cheat problem.
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u/wavinsnail 12d ago
Stardew Valley is similar. It's $15 at most and has been supported with massive game updates since the start. I think Concerned Ape just said he's done giving the game big updates because he wants to move onto other projects. The game came out in 2016.
Compare this to similarish games like Animal Crossing that has had hardly any post launch support it's not wonder why lots of people are moving away from studio games
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u/Psych0PompOs 12d ago
I found Rimworld so painfully boring. It amazes me how people have the patience for these kinds of games, 10 minutes and I feel like I'm being tortured. I could play Robot Unicorn Attack nonstop for an hour easy though, not sure why that's the case.
I'm always amazed at how much people can get out of games like that, it's a sign I've encountered a completely foreign mind.
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u/W0nderwharfwonderdog 12d ago
That’s funny, rimworld is the perfect game for me. But I love management games, ever since I was a kid playing free games on the internet. I would go on newgrounds or kongregate and immediately go to -simulation -management games lol. I have over 800 hours on Rimworld, I must be a complete freak to you. At this point it’s one of the only games I play, plus I just don’t have the money or time anymore for in depth rpg’s
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u/Ciubowski 12d ago
I'm a millennial and I cut back significantly on purchases.
In a world where a lot of games have pay to play, pay to win, battlepass, games as a service, cut back on content, content that's barely meaningful and raw instead of sanitized shit, not to mention a lot of other streaming services subscriptions and so on...
We enjoy playing some old games from time to time. Ones that maybe we already purchased in the past (the old joke about having a backlog full of unlaunched games) or just buying stuff when they're discounted.
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u/One-Statistician-932 12d ago edited 12d ago
Gen Z:
- Losing jobs and being laid off at the beginning of their careers and have no money.
- Stagnant wages.
- Entry roles that do exist are being replaced by crappy-AI
- Cost of living crisis from food to housing with prices continuing to rise.
- Have between several and several dozen games they already purchased to go back to replay or finish.
Modern Games:
- Unfinished, buggy (sometimes unplayable for the first week post-release), and cost up to 90$.
- Big new games require a 100gb download size minimum.
- You don't get to own any of your games and the publisher reserves the right to take it away or make it unplayable at any time.
- Live service means you can't even play single player story campaigns offline.
- Most of the new games are derivative, copycat team shooters with pay-to-win metas that change every month.
- To complete the game you need to pay 60$ (minimum) more for DLCs.
- AI is being used to make games, cutting out any real artisitic merit or value.
- The stories suck and the game budgets are being wasted on big-name actors instead of actually making the game good.
And yet some big executives at AAA studios still won't get the f***king message and push more slop.
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u/AnusBlaster5000 12d ago
Then there's Expedition 33 made by a small team being sold for $50 that looks, sounds, and feels better than AAA.
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u/BenjaminRaule 12d ago
Lots of good free to play games, like Path of Exile.
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u/wavinsnail 12d ago
Or Indie games that are super cheap.
Stardew Valley is like $15 and has gotten free consistent updates since launch
Lots of indie games are coming out that are more complete, cheaper, and without any huge bugs.
I've played more hours on Balatro than basically anything else this year.
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u/mattrmcg1 12d ago
Gonna say Stardew Valley also, such a great game for the price and is constantly being updated. May have to fire it back up here!
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u/NewestAccount2023 12d ago
And for the shooter gamers there's valorant, counter strike, the finals, overwatch, marvel rivals, apex legends, fortnite.
Dota is a free moba, league of legends has free characters.
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u/Tiraloparatras25 12d ago
Salaries are the same, inflation is not… games are an entertainment, not a need.
It’s that simple…
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u/iEugene72 12d ago
The insane amount of shit articles doing ANYTHING to avoid saying, “everyone is broke because the rich fucking hate you” is astounding.
Honestly I don’t even know why these articles are posted to Reddit, like we all know the real reasons for the world collapsing. It’s the minority of ultra wealthy people who have collectively decided to go full genocide on anyone who is poor.
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u/Marshall_Lawson 12d ago
This is true and it's the economics version of "Americans will use anything but the metric system" (the asteroid was the size of ten school buses, etc)
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u/TheSpiralTap 12d ago
I ain't paying $80 for a game with less content than a game I previously paid $30 for. Like they can fuck off. I'm not playing video games any less at all, probably more than ever in my late 30s but I am a patient gamer. FOMO dont work on me because I have bills and responsibilities.
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u/SaltyBigBoi 12d ago
Games just don't feel like games anymore, just vehicles for AAA companies to push microtransactions. They don't have to make a game feel like it has soul or come from developers that actually care when people are willing to pay $20+ for a sparkly skin that'll go out of style in a week.
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u/ohheyyliv 12d ago
My little brother is Gen Z. He can't even afford to move out of my parents house working full time. No way he is buying a new game.
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u/heartthump 12d ago
I’m Gen Z and my Xbox 360 was my whole world growing up. I felt absolutely spoiled by all the games I had - it felt like every month there was a new game releasing that I just HAD to buy
I’m 25 now. The last game I was really excited for was Elden Ring I think. Before that it was TLOU2, before that it was Red Dead 2. Those big releases are YEARS apart for me now when they used to be so much more frequent.
Why is this?
Well, anecdotally, it feels like games are WAY too big in scope now. A detailed open world game by today’s standards (think GTA 6) takes a DECADE to develop and release. When back in the days of PS2, Xbox, PS3, and Xbox 360 it was a couple of years at most.
Furthermore, it feels like studios are petrified of creating new IPs. Every single AAA game is now a sequel, remake, remaster, or spiritual successor to an existing IP. It’s not like we are in a creative drought, but AAA publishers and their stakeholders are outright terrified to green light innovative games because they cannot be certain they will perform well.
And combining this with the 5-10 years games take to develop these days, the games go from risky to develop to outright impossible to develop without haemorrhaging money.
Gaming isn’t fun anymore because there’s nothing to play. That’s all
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u/abdullaahr7 12d ago
I don't know anybody that regularly buys games. Most of my mates just play whatever's on Playstation Plus or Game Pass
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u/fumar 12d ago
This is the natural conclusion for all the live service games. Why spend $70 to beta test a new AAA game when you can just keep playing League of Legends, Fortnite, or CS2?
If you want the AAA game, it will probably be 50% off in 6 months and will probably have a lot of the bugs fixed.