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2024 was the year gamers really started pushing back on the erosion of game ownership
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this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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I think there is absolutely a sense that some of these games aren't worth jumping into because the longevity won't be there. That doesn't necessarily mean the alternative is people sticking around and playing traditional paid experiences instead, though. What seems to be happening instead is people sticking with a few "forever games" and getting stuck there, sort of out of the market. We've seen that dynamic before, when everybody was trying to come up with a MMO to replace WoW, or in the very stagnant mobile market.
That's at least somewhat self-cleansing though. If everyone else loses hundreds of millions of dollars trying to become the next live service phenomenon, they'll learn that it's unlikely they will be and stop pursuing it. That losing strategy has caused major shakeups at EA and Ubisoft and immensely hurt Bandai-Namco and WB next to their more traditional offerings doing gangbusters. If I'm going to glance five minutes into the future with a dash of expecting current trends to extrapolate into the future, maybe the model that makes everyone happy is more of this "prologue" model that Metaphor and tons of smaller Steam releases have been employing, which is just a roundabout way to return to shareware from 30 years ago.
Well, when the reward being dangled is a Fortnite-sized chunk of the industry worth billions by itself it's hard to suggest that the real answer is more, smaller, less profitable releases. Especially with public companies with a mandate to seek endless growth. It's not like big traditional single player games are a surefire thing, either.
It's a bit of a rough time for the industry right now, frankly. So... on that note, happy holidays everybody!