>>716244825
>>716244979
>have a way bigger playerbase
>they're selling more than ever before
NO THEY FUCKING DON'T: https://www.matthewball.co/all/stateofvideogaming2025

As I said in the original post, console growth has been stagnant for 10 years. PC has grown only slightly. All the growth was funded by mobile freemium games. And in the last 3 years since covid even THAT growth has disappeared and the entire industry is stagnant. Why THE FUCK do you think there's so many layoffs/cancellations recently. There is no more player growth. Gamers just live in denial.

>Expedition 33 is an amazing game and its only 50 bucks
It is an amazing game, but not exactly a marvel of game engineering. It's just a well-directed JRPG with a rhythm component. The best engineers capable of making innovative projects primarily only work for AAAA studios that can bankroll their salaries. And the reason those projects wind up being so bloated is because, as I keep stressing, the market is stagnating. Studios are increasingly bloating games to appeal to every conceivable demographic because they can't fund themselves otherwise because whiny consumer hard cap the price ceiling.

>>716245136
>Cool, when am I getting a raise?
You should be. I've been getting raises every year of my career. If you're not getting consistent raises, it's because your employer is screwing you over and you should be looking for a new job.

>>714594007
Gamers have a massive misconception of how gaming is performing. Most gaming revenue is concentrated in mobile and live service. In the single-player space, there's way too much oversaturation. More games are releasing than ever but with so many forever games in the interlude, the competition to get gamers to check out your game is more fierce than ever.

The AA and small AAA market is dead. There are two kinds of gamers:
1) gamers who will literally only come out for THE BIG ONES, games so huge they're cultural events
2) gamers who will play anything including super low budget pixel graphics which means AA and small AAA are burning more money to compete against hundreds of cheap indies

These layoffs are essentially publishers recognizing this fact. No more 100 person teams working on just another action-adventure game with your own original lore. You either make do with very small, cheap teams or you suck it up and work on one of THE BIG ONES.