even milleneals arnt paying it, like myself. not paying for things like switch, or swsh, because they decided to enshittify the console or games, and gouge prices.
Gen Z Is Cutting Back On Video Game Purchases
Submitted 8 months ago by mintiefresh@piefed.ca to games@lemmy.world
Comments
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 8 months ago
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I’m not gonna lie, I’ve spent hundreds. But I’m definitely not buying a switch 2, what a rip off.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 8 months ago
i was almost tempted to get it for the first swsh, glad i dint after listening to masuda"enshittifying speech"
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They don’t come out with original work that get’s people interested and/or they enshittify the franchise. If GreatGame was good, we’re on GreatGame VI with microtransactions, paid skins, fortnite play, no immersive single player campaign, and ads with no real change to anything else.
dukemirage@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Look outside AAA gaming. It‘s never been better.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Almost. It was better a few months ago before the payment processors started threatening the game platforms
Asparagus0098@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I do buy games from time to time, but 2 of my most played games on Steam are just free games. OpenTTD and vivid/stasis.
Evrala@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I keep buying games on sale but I’m just not playing much of my backlog.
I keep going back to a few strategy games and putting even more hours in. The vast majority of my gaming in the past 2 years has been between 3 games.
Ultimate Admiral Dreadnought - Janky, and I have problems with how HE shells are handled in the main mod I play, keep booting it up. 850 hours played.
Star Wars Empire At War. So many amazing mods.
Wartales - game gets stale after a while but it’s good enough that after a bit I go back to it to put even more hours in.
I have so many amazing games that when I do play them I love them, but I keep going back to these strategy games. Oh, and a bunch of time on Need For Speed Heat.
I’ve been spending a bunch on other games, but I’m just not playing them.
JiminaMann@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Maybe on bad triple A games
Steam’s indie games tho, gen Z are spending a shit ton there
mohab@piefed.social 8 months ago
Then who is? Millions of people are gonna buy the new Call of Duty on release. Who are they?
pycorax@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
With how much CoD costs and how the player base tends to abandon the game once the new one releases, Game Pass is pretty much the most logical way of getting your hands on CoD. I reckon most people play it through that.
0li0li@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Kids on consoles with mom’s money, those kids that eat up shit like Fortnite and other live-service shovelware.
astutemural@midwest.social 8 months ago
drasglaf@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
For people outside of .world (like me):
!foss_gaming@lemmy.world
Phelpssan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Like others said, it’s not just Gen-Z.
Funny enough, the main reason I’m spending far less is the gaming industry’s push to kill physical copies.
I used to buy a lot of physical games at full price because they would be much harder to find later on, but since I’ve been forced to go towards digital games this is no longer an issue, so I just let them sit on my wishlist until I they’re massively discounted.
Nikls94@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Me, looking at my physical stash of games
I OWN them!
jordanlund@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Gen X, can’t actually remember the last time I bought a game.
Suikoden 1 & 2 on PS5? I think that was it.
I used to buy games all the time, but I won’t pay for a digital release I don’t own. Avowed? Digital only. Looked for Expedition 33, couldn’t find it on physical.
I’m not leaving gaming, gaming is leaving me.
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
The economy is terrible with both hardware and software becoming more expensive, theres a good selection of free and long-lifetime games (be it live-service or just very long and replayable), and a lot of the newer paid games have become worse.
I’d be significantly more suprised if this wasn’t the case.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 8 months ago
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Do they have money? I don’t have money.
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Modern games from major devs fucking suck.
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normonator@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Modern games fucking suck. Start making good shit if you want people to buy them.
Also fuck the useless malware anticheats. Do it server side if you want to be even mildly effectivenor fuck off.
Nosavingthrow@lemmy.world 8 months ago
What? You don’t want to play another indie rogulile/meta-commentaty rpg? How about a ‘deep’ story that they plagiarized from a kids’ show?
0li0li@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Playing indie games only until so-called AAA get their shit together, if ever . . .
normonator@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
I miss the the Battlefield 3-4 days for large scale shooters. Everything since has been complete trash. Battlebit is terrible, it’s not even similar.
I’m not going to get that kind of game from an indie developer unfortunately. If it happens I’ll be there.
atticus88th@lemmy.world 8 months ago
My son stopped playing some of the latest stuff because of the crazy levels of anti cheating intrusionware. Better mental health not playing competitive multiplayer too.
Fingolfinz@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Support indie games. Great games and no where near as pricey. Then just pirate the triple a titles through fmhy.org or something
Mark12870@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I also didn’t really buy many games until I had proper salary. 🤷🏻♂️ Some of gen-Z are still pretty young and they are just poor students…
nman90@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Less money to buy games, cost of games go up, quality still crap, riddled with micro transactions. Why buy a game when it comes out when you can wait to buy it on a sale while you play your backlog and by the time you buy the game it will be the best version because they had time to fix it up, almost never to the degree it should be but still the best it’s going to get
BurntWits@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
That’s exactly why I love !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works. It pays to be patient.
nman90@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Thanks for another sub for me to find game deals, much appreciated.
Lfrith@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
What stands out most from the article is that the 18-24 demographic has a 25% drop off compared to other groups with a 5% drop off.
Not a great sign for the future if cut backs isn’t simply due to deciding to be fiscally responsible, but overall money problems for every day expenses.
Reporter Rachel Wolfe concluded that contributing factors to dropped spending included a difficult job market, student loans, and a particularly high credit card delinquency rate among those aged 18 to 29.
mugita_sokiovt@discuss.online 8 months ago
I’m taking the Rossmann route on this, and using a net in order to get games that are no longer on any storefront.
That’s what my producer, Neigsendoig, did with WWE 2K19, because it’s abandonware now by most standards.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Why buy a new game when you have no money and your backlog will take years to go through?
ushmel@piefed.world 8 months ago
They're spending their time scrolling. The GenZ equivalent of television. GenZ is also getting older. The median age is over college graduate age. They're simply working more or doing other things besides video games. Not everyone is a Paradox gamer. I'm sure the GenZ Paradox gamers, PC gamers, and FPS/sports enthusiasts are all still buying the same games. But the people growing out of it might buy 1-2 per year and play ~10 hrs per month. The "youngest GenZ" is about 13 years old now.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Exactly.
The Internet forgets it constantly and shitty slop farms like modern day vice love to ignore it:
Call of Duty isn’t just competing with Fortnite. They are both competing with Andor and the NFL and mr beast and Subway Surfers and so forth. Also dating but genz is extra genz about that.
Its a tale as old as time itself. Once you have disposable income you have responsibilities. Some people insist “games aren’t as good as they used to be because I didn’t spend 500 hours playing Final Fantasy 29 over and over again”. Others are unable to respond because they slept wrong and tweaked their neck.
Other outlets (including both Aftermath and Remap which are ACTUALLY the gaming news parts of the good vice…) have talked about this ad nauseum. Kids, generally, aren’t buying even 50 dollar games. They are playing f2p shit on their phones or playing fortnite or roblocks which are also both f2p games. And the spending for those is generally not tracked alongside the GTAs and the like.
Like, we all shit on Sony for their horrific mismanagement and their quest for a live service game (and cheer that they aren’t as bad as microsoft, I guess?). But… there is a reason for that. That might not be what us olds want to play (I actually like some live service games but whatever…). It is more conducive to what people who still have time to spend money on gaming want. Which is ALSO why there is such a big push for “collector’s editions” and “limited re-releases” so that the olds who don’t have time to play will still buy a 200 dollar cartridge they’ll never use.
ushmel@piefed.world 8 months ago
I'm not a gaming stats expert but if they don't track the mobile and f2p game spend with the general gaming spend, then that's kind of a bogus stat to draw the article's conclusion from. Most "mobile gaming" people I know spend more money on those games than I do on Steam with an incredibly long backlog of games I'll never play.
Ashtear@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Setting aside how unusual it is for overall spend to decrease in this age cohort (I encourage people to read the WSJ report linked in this article), this is the only comment here that hits on the most newsworthy part of this. Video games have been recession-resistant for decades, but now we’re seeing it as a leading category for cutbacks. Even though gaming is a low-cost hobby, zoomers have found alternatives, and that surely includes F2P games.
While trends haven’t been great for a while now, this is the most alarming data I’ve seen yet for the traditional gaming market. I feel like I’m gonna blink and there’s going to be a generational divide like there is with baseball.
chunes@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’ve been living under a rock. What happened to baseball?
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 8 months ago
You nailed it with the age thing.
newthrowaway20@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Not just Gen Z lol. People don’t have money, games are a luxury, luxuries are the first to go when you need to stretch your cash. Not that complicated.
Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
The article says for other age groups it dropped single digit percent points, so yeah it is mostly Gen Z in this case.
MellowYellow13@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Also modern games are trash, that’s kind of a big one you are missing
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 8 months ago
even if we do, the cost doesnt justify the poor quality of some of these games.
Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I have money for games…but NONE of it is going to any company that makes me scream AAAAA…or when they charge 40+ for a game. screw em.
even their 100$ trash at 95% off…hell no. that’s even worse cause you know the game is extra shit.
all my money goes directly to Indy devs. games are actually fun, made with passion and they don’t try to screw me every chance they get. I stopped with big title garbage like 6-7 years ago. never going back.
this mentality even applies to all my shopping. I don’t buy crap anymore and I wish more people would do the same.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 8 months ago
But then how can you create an artificial divide and pit one generation against another?
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Oh gee! I wonder why is this happening?!
I guess we’ll never know!
Anyway, let’s release another copy-paste game at 90€/$ with 50€/$ in dlcs and another collector edition with some plastic toy for 300!
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
This criticism is genuinely like 10-13 years out of date, gramps.
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
And yet here we are, with games more expensive than 10 years ago and people spending less than 10 years ago. Seems strange, right?
NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com 8 months ago
Collectors editions don’t even include physical items anymore. At least you got something cool to keep. Now it’s some worthless download your item once and never again.
I still have those cheap night vision goggles from one of the Call of Duty editions. They’re subpar quality but still pretty cool.
Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
90€ + 50€ • DLC? Isn’t that too little for the poor record-profit industry titans with budgets in the billions and nonsensical brand loyalty all over the world?
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 8 months ago
originally i was going to get the first swsh in the generation plus a switch at the time, no thank you, based on how the game came out and what the company, gamefreak said will happen to the future games. 300-400$ switch, +60+15 dlc+ nintendo related services, and storage.(im underestimating some of the costs)
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
We need to keep the games affordable so they can spend some money in the microtransaction hell that is our store and that is basically mandatory if you want tr keep up the pace with the other games in the pvp mode of the game (the only one available, because we removed local modes since we believe that playing with friends
doesn’t make you want to spend on lootboxesis not as fun as playing with randos
The_Helmet_Stays_On@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
A collectors edition that doesn’t include the game either.
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
It’s for your own good. This way you can purchase the game separately and we keep the collector edition reasonable price tag.
C4551E@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Don’t forget to delete last year’s version from all your customers’ hard drives!
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
You don’t have to, we can do it for you. Look: we just removed the game from your account so you can purchase the new one without regrets!
Takios@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Unsurprisingly. Games have gotten way more expensive and a lot more soulless. Gems like BG3 are a rarity. The recently released “enhanced” edition of Neverwinter Nights 2 is an awful cashgrab and an disappointment after the successful enhanced edition of the first one so I’m just playing through the original release with an unofficial patch again…The only game I’m looking forward to this year is the new Anno and given that Ubisoft has its fingers in it I’m still wary about that one.