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Comment on I'm A Game Dev Who Got Layed Off From His Non-Game Dev Job

PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Start looking. It’s a very saturated market. Unless you can get some YouTubers or streamers to play your game then it’s not going to make much of anything.

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nullify3112@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Can you expand on why you think the market is saturated?

Games are some of the most complex pieces of software you can make and they rely heavily on artistic elements, meaning that it’s not 100% technical work.

It makes it hard IMHO to even become a game dev and make a game in the first place. Wondering why you think the game dev market is saturated given that assumption.

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- kazerniel@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  Can you expand on why you think the market is saturated?
  
  Not the one you responded to, but:
  
  More than 19,000 games released on Steam in 2025 — Chris Zukowski’s tally puts it at 20,282, which works out to about 55 games per day. And 2026 is running faster: SteamDB counted 11,979 releases in the first half of the year alone, a pace of roughly 66 per day that projects to something near 24,000 for the full year if it holds. (source)
  
  and roughly 3/4 of them get less than 50 reviews, and half has less than 10, which means basically no audience (source)
  
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  - nullify3112@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Well that is an over-saturation of games. Isn’t that mainly due to AI tools making it easy to make all the elements you would need for a game in a mediocre way? People are still playing games and buying them and game devs still have to make them. Are you saying that the industry has been automated enough that the need for talent really isn’t there anymore?
    
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    kazerniel@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    On the 2nd link it shows that in 2022, even before genAI tools broke into game development, Steam released 12,248 games, so on average 34/day. So genAI at most only doubled the output rate.
    
    Yes, there were many low-effort asset flips out there even before AI, but I think the main factor is that game development is a global industry, and from the pool of billions of gamers, tons and tons of talented and hard-working game developers emerge who all compete against each other for attention. And like in other creative industries, the handful of most successful companies on top command most of the audience’s interest, while the vast majority of aspirants can’t make a livelihood from this work.
    
    I found this article from early 2022 that says that at the time there were 44,000 game developers on Steam, 3/4 of whom only released a single game. (It doesn’t say the reason why - I suppose could be just starting their career, or their first release was so unsuccessful they didn’t continue trying.) 57% of developers at the time made less than 1,000 USD lifetime revenue.
    
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