Comment on Behold, "the whole story of Steam's economy in one picture": the top 1% of games earn 84.5% of estimated revenue, and most games barely make anything

• pory@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  And the smallest in volume. The number of games on Steam that cost a million dollars or more to make (owned by shareholder value generators) is much lower than other types. For every one Assassin’s Creed there are ten Peaks and Slay the Spires and lower quality “real, good indie games”. And for every real, good indie game there’s a hundred asset flips and ai slop “games”.

  source

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    For every one Assassin’s Creed there are ten Peaks and Slay the Spires and lower quality “real, good indie games”.

    I’ll spot you that for every Assassin’s Creed, there’s ten lower quality games. Probably closer to 100 lower quality games, tbh. But to suggest that there’s ten “Slay the Spire” games for every one AC? You’ve got to be kidding. Slay the Spire is exceptionally good as a deck-based rogue-like. I don’t know if I could find ten other games in the entire Steam store that compare properly. Absolutely in its own league.

    And for every real, good indie game there’s a hundred asset flips and ai slop “games”.

    Even games that aren’t asset flips or AI slop can be very hit-or-miss. There’s tons of mediocre JRPGs. There’s tons of Farmville-style endless click simulators. There’s puzzle games galore. There’s bad ports of older titles. There are games with crummy interfaces and miserable learning curves and needlessly graphic art.

    I tried out Stellar Blade recently. And while I enjoyed the combat mechanics, the fundamental quality of the art was good, and the dialogue was… fine, I couldn’t get over the fact that I was piloting a woman in skin-tight lingerie against Dick and Ball monsters. Gave up inside the first chapter.

    Tales of Arise had absolutely miserable writing. Monster Hunter: Stories was fun for maybe 5 hours before I’d figured out the mechanics and bored by the flat, unimpressive landscapes. Darkest Dungeon 2 failed to meaningfully improve on the original, while tossing in a bunch of extra mechanics that just made the game feel clunky.

    Making a good game is hard even when you do it properly.

    source

    • pory@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Slay the Spire and lower quality but still “real” indie games. That entire gamut. The best games ever made and “uhh it’s balatro but with throwing darts”. That’s all more numerous than AAA stuff and also dwarfed in volume by porn jigsaw puzzles, asset flips, and other actual zero effort slop “games”. AAA and “real indie games” are a tiny minority of the games on steam.

      source

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The best games ever made and “uhh it’s balatro but with throwing darts”.

        Aside from being addictive, Balatro’s a popular game because it plays well on any medium. Deck-builder rogue-likes are phone friendly, PC friendly, and not entirely unapproachable on console.

        AAA and “real indie games” are a tiny minority of the games on steam.

        That’s all true. But even if we cut out the click-bait and the slop, lots of games fail on their own merits.

        240 games in 2026 “worth spending money on” is not a dire portrait of AAA slurping up the market space.

        Yeah, I absolutely agree. Adding in the denominator counts for a lot. I might caveat that with the question “Are those 240 games any good?” Because it’s very possible that slop games are what pull in all the revenue, while quality titles flounder. But, again, that would require some real actual journalism instead of click-bait rage-bait headlines.

        Incidentally, has anyone asked about the state of game journalism recently? What are those stats looking like?

        source
  • Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah, and do you think those games will be part of the 1% that make 84.5% of revenue?

    No, it will be the AAA games.

    source

    • pory@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      “Real games” (AAA, top tier indie, low tier indie) can easily be as low as 1-2% of “steam releases”. 12k games were published on Steam over half of this year. That would mean, if you want to care about this meaningless statistic of “x% of games drive y% of revenue”, that there’s room for over 240 “worthwhile” games to have released in 2026 without disrupting the scary 1% metric at all. Two hundred forty games this year. AAA releases are what, ten or twenty a year? Less? That’s not 1%, it’s 0.0004%. The other 99.9996% of the 1% are free to be indie games or GAAS or whatever else.

      source
• Dyskolos@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  AAA titles made by corporations arebecame the trashiest of them all

  Be fair. It was better many moons ago. And still valid for (many) non-US AAA.

  source

  • Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The only reason it was better before is because before only AAA games existed.

    You couldn’t make a SNES cartridge without tons of money behind it.

    source

    • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      There is more than consoles… There always were indie-games. Just maybe not on every console. I could name a ton of excellent AAA from the good-old-times.

      source