In a new report from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, which centers around one of the modern video game industry's issues: there are simply too many games. Schreier pointed out a staggering statistic to consider about how the industry has changed in the last few years, showing that according to SteamDB, the amount of games released on Steam in 2020 totalled around 9,656. In 2024, that number went up 93%, to 18,626.
In today's attention economy, where video game developers aren't just competing with other developers to get players buying and playing their games but with streaming services, social media apps, and so on, it's hard enough for studios to sell copies in the first place. Add to that the fact that there are more games launching all the time, every day, with both big triple-A titles and small indie titles vying for attention, and the problem is further exacerbated.
To be clear, this isn't necessarily a problem for casual video game enjoyer-Joe Blow. It's arguably a better time than ever before to be someone who enjoys playing video games, simply because there is such a flux of good games to play, at a variety of price points, available on multiple devices and even on ones that don't need to be primed for playing games, thanks to better-than-ever cloud streaming services.
But it is a growing challenge for game developers who, particularly when you consider that games like Fortnite and other live-service forever-style games are the biggest competition to anyone trying to just release a new, fully-formed game.
You won't see game studios cite the fact that there are 'too many games' as a reason for why their laying off staff or shutting down, but this is a new reality that the industry is having to grapple with now more than before.
It's not necessarily something that can be solved, nor should it really be considered a problem, so to speak. But it can't be denied that the growth of the video game industry in recent years means there's a new normal that game developers simply did not have to contend with at the same level a short five years ago.
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