It's just you.

44% of playing time on Steam last year was for games more than 8 years old and only 14% for games less than 1 year old. https://www.tweaktown.com/news/109388/steam-r … ames/index.html

The industry would really like old games to go away except when they can sell you a low effort remaster for another $30. They're competing with at least 20 years worth of their own old products, usually not sold at full price.

Live service games also sucked all the oxygen out of the room since most people only have time (and disk space) for one of those at most.

It won't be a crash because of how open the market is now, it will be a gradual replacement of the behemoths that have lost the ability to make a decent game for various reasons. Kind of like old ground being dragged back into the earth's crust in a subduction zone. There are great games still being released - Resident Evil Requiem and Expedition 33 being two recent examples. They are just happening outside of the usual giants.

It's tough seeing your favourite game franchises turn to garbage, but at some point you have to let go.

There were crap games in the 80's as well, but people forget about them. Indie games are like old shareware games, crappy but ok for the price.

These days AAA games are expensive as hell to make, there are millions of man-hours just in the graphic details, so you mostly get proven game remakes, or sequels (same as in movies).

I hate phone games.

I think World of Warcraft and Diablo III pretty much killed the stand-alone game market for decent titles because paying for online play is much more profitable for companies.

I wouldn't expect another 80's style crash.

The big difference is in how games are distributed. Back in the 80s, they had to manufacture physical cartridges, so there was considerably more upfront investment required.

These days digital distribution is much cheaper and there are many ways for games to get funded that can ease investment requirements.

80's games usually had 1 programmer working a few months to make a game, very little investment compared to anything done today (even including cart production).

I view game production today the same as music production as there are many ways to distribute product but only a few make any money because of the volume produced. The top 10 titles of any platform get 50-60% of all revenue for that platform.

Read this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1ih … die_games_that/

Here's a few key insights:

➡️ 83.92% of AA game revenue comes from the top 10% of games

➡️ 84.98% of Indie game revenue is also concentrated in the top 10%

➡️ The median revenue for self-published games is $3,285, while publisher-backed games have a median revenue of $16,222. That’s 5x more revenue for published titles. Is this because good games are more likely to get published, or because of publisher support?

➡️ AA & Indie F2P games made a surprising amount of money.

The median game makes a relatively small amount of money because the median game is junk.

11,500 games (out of 18,000) made less than $500 and were filtered out.

Median just means half the data points are higher than that number and half are lower, it's not the average because a few titles make all the money.

I know what a median is. I said what I said.

there's been less games and more ai slop driven wallet extractor schemes lately. Best to ignore the Geoff show and seek indie titles.

At the very least, live service games seem to be winding down. Most recently, Highguard shut down after only 45 days, despite getting super hyped by Geoff at the game awards. People are simply tired of these money grabbing schemes, and just want to play good games.

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-03-12, 21:01:

There are great games still being released - Resident Evil Requiem and Expedition 33 being two recent examples. They are just happening outside of the usual giants.

I recently picked up Expedition 33, and after running through its prologue for just few minutes to dial in my GPU settings, I could instantly tell why this game was so well received and won all the awards last year. Really looking forward to playing this.

Unknown_K wrote on 2026-03-12, 21:25:

There were crap games in the 80's as well, but people forget about them. Indie games are like old shareware games, crappy but ok […]
Show full quote

There were crap games in the 80's as well, but people forget about them. Indie games are like old shareware games, crappy but ok for the price.

These days AAA games are expensive as hell to make, there are millions of man-hours just in the graphic details, so you mostly get proven game remakes, or sequels (same as in movies).

I hate phone games.

I think World of Warcraft and Diablo III pretty much killed the stand-alone game market for decent titles because paying for online play is much more profitable for companies.

There is huge push back against the Live Service slop right now, players are done with it. There is a lot of room for indie games and good single player games and the odd good PvP game too, MMOS have been dead for a long time too and unless you are a big established MMO its simply not worth the cost to get involved.

Having seen what WoW has become of late I think its better that it stays a dead genre...turning a game about warcraft into a cozy fucking house builder MMO..then again the entire studio is nothing but "Modern Audience game devs" so no surprise its become what it is.

I am old enough to admit I was around when the huge compilation shareware ..cough shovelware CDs and DVD were around and will even admit to owning several of them ...amongst all the rubbish on these discs there were gems to be found but mostly its was just lots of shareware crap. so yes shit games have been around forever I wish people didnt forget that detail.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-03-13, 04:28:

At the very least, live service games seem to be winding down. Most recently, Highguard shut down after only 45 days, despite getting super hyped by Geoff at the game awards. People are simply tired of these money grabbing schemes, and just want to play good games.

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-03-12, 21:01:

There are great games still being released - Resident Evil Requiem and Expedition 33 being two recent examples. They are just happening outside of the usual giants.

I recently picked up Expedition 33, and after running through its prologue for just few minutes to dial in my GPU settings, I could instantly tell why this game was so well received and won all the awards last year. Really looking forward to playing this.

RE9 which released recently is another really good single player game, its the first game since CP2077 that really showcases just how good Pathtracing can look when done correctly, it even runs pretty well with PT on. The game itself is short but that's fine, it doesn't out stay its welcome and Capcom have already said more story is on the way.

Is it worth buying a PT capable GPU to play .. no of course not but if you have the hardware then its worth turning it on to see it in action.

I still feel Native Pathtracing without upscaling assist is still a good 5 years away but damn if it doesn't look pretty as it is now. (Assuming GPUs still exist in 5 years and the industry hasnt pushed everyone over to buying their GPU compute via streaming)

keenmaster486 wrote on 2026-03-12, 22:44:

The median game makes a relatively small amount of money because the median game is junk.

Spoken like a lion 😁

It's embarassing that the modern game industry (not talking about indie games here), despite all the technical progress in the last decades, is unable to release games that can compete with 20 or even 30 year old ones. And it's even more disgusting that they began selling us these 30 year old games bundled with dosbox, zero patches or improvements, on steam for 10 or 20 bucks. Greed really does not know any limits...

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-03-13, 06:37:

...
I still feel Native Pathtracing without upscaling assist is still a good 5 years away but damn if it doesn't look pretty as it is now. (Assuming GPUs still exist in 5 years and the industry hasnt pushed everyone over to buying their GPU compute via streaming)

Good looking graphics are neat for sure, but a good game lives from other qualities, like gameplay, atmosphere and replay value IMHO. Nice graphics are like the cherry on top of a cake, but the cherry itself won't do any good...

Stesch wrote on 2026-03-13, 07:28:

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-03-13, 06:37:

...
I still feel Native Pathtracing without upscaling assist is still a good 5 years away but damn if it doesn't look pretty as it is now. (Assuming GPUs still exist in 5 years and the industry hasnt pushed everyone over to buying their GPU compute via streaming)

Good looking graphics are neat for sure, but a good game lives from other qualities, like gameplay, atmosphere and replay value IMHO. Nice graphics are like the cherry on top of a cake, but the cherry itself won't do any good...

RE9 and CP2077 both have oodles of good gameplay to match the graphics, that said there are some stunningly beautiful games with utter SHITE for gameplay or are literal walking simulators so yes graphics do not make the game.

That's why reviews from both users and proven critics are so useful along with benchmarking from places like GN and Digital Foundry to give a full picture, these days I will not put down any money until I have some gameplay reviews to work with.

Crimson Desert is another promising game coming out soon that looks to have both gameplay and graphics .. reviews will tell for certain but Pearl Abyss is well known and has some serious chops when it comes to optimising graphics and gameplay.

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-03-13, 06:35:

I am old enough to admit I was around when the huge compilation shareware ..cough shovelware CDs and DVD were around and will even admit to owning several of them ...amongst all the rubbish on these discs there were gems to be found but mostly its was just lots of shareware crap. so yes shit games have been around forever I wish people didnt forget that detail.

To me, shareware discs died around when "eGames . Com Always Open For Fun!" took over and became just too corporate by 99-2000. What would usually were taking the place of a shareware on a coverdisc would be a very professional timebomb trials of some kind.

One thing to add. In a mobile landscape game apps and gambling apps are getting little blurry. I would illegalize all gambling apps. Some are even gambling apps plus bitcoin.

leileilol wrote on 2026-03-13, 11:24:

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-03-13, 06:35:

I am old enough to admit I was around when the huge compilation shareware ..cough shovelware CDs and DVD were around and will even admit to owning several of them ...amongst all the rubbish on these discs there were gems to be found but mostly its was just lots of shareware crap. so yes shit games have been around forever I wish people didnt forget that detail.

To me, shareware discs died around when "eGames . Com Always Open For Fun!" took over and became just too corporate by 99-2000. What would usually were taking the place of a shareware on a coverdisc would be a very professional timebomb trials of some kind.

Id just like to state for the record ..I LOATHE timebomb trials, it was one of the worst tings you could release to the public and in the end was really pointless as there were far to many ways to get around the time bomb.