this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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Shit like this is why people go back and play much older titles and have a great time with them.
c/patientgamers rise up! Or maybe not. We'll just wait until it goes on sale and maybe give it a try down the road.
A friend and I literally just finished Diablo II with SlashDiablo's servers so we avoid Blizzard. It was an awesome time
"People" as in maybe 5% of players. Most of the money is in what is being released - live services, forever games. They're not idiots, they have statistics and know what most players actually pay for.
The entirety of sales for Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, generated less money than a single mount skin in World of Warcraft.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/only-15-percent-of-all-steam-users-time-was-spent-playing-games-released-in-2024/
Also with all the recent Concord-style live service fails maybe investors will want to fund other stuff from now on? idk
Playtime has nothing to do with this. If I pull 800hrs in Garry's Mod and then 10 people buy Fifa and put in 2hrs each, most of the playtime is mine in an old game. Yet I paid like $10 for it and they spent $600. It also isn't surprising that older games have more playtime - more time for someone who is "hooked" to play something. There is only 24hrs in a day after all. Also this doesn't count live service games seperately and games outside of steam - League of Legends comes to mind. Same for Warframe. Huge behemoths that people play for hundreds of hours and spend hundreds of dollars on.
That's the part of the comment I was referring to. It's factually wrong: only ~15% of playtime is spent on 2024 games
LoL didn't release in 2024, neither did Warframe. I'm not arguing that old service games don't make the most revenue, they obviously do, I'm arguing that a lot of the live service games that are actively comming out are almost all underperforming and failing to get any kind of audience. All that means there's very little incentive to develop a new live service game unless you already have a big community for it or a brilliant idea
If you have a lot of money, you're better off investing in a "Black Myth Wukong" or "Elden Ring" -- both of which are outperforming the newest Call of Duty on Steam in revenue -- compared to a new random live service game
A lot of it is untracked, though. I know we live in the era of big data, but Blizzard et al has no clue how many people are playing TIE Fighter Total Conversion and countless other old games. 5% is way too low of a made up estimate.
Hell, classic arcade emulators are ubiquitous.
My point here is not that game publishers aren't making money. My point is, gamers don't have to buy into it to have fun.