this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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Gen Z Is Cutting Back On Video Game Purchases (www.vice.com)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by mintiefresh@piefed.ca to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Everyone is.

I don't buy new releases anymore.

Why?

Cause the prices are getting stupid. Cause its all digital downloads with no physical product. Cause my "ownership" can be revoked at any time by the platforms whims or the platforms shutdown.

What happened to digital downloads being cheaper, anyway? Thats the promise we were sold 10+ years ago. That by sacrificing physical products, Publishers/Devs wouldnt have to pay for printing, manufacturing, shipping, storage, etc, so they'd be able to sell AAA new releases for 30 dollars, and Pub/Dev would still make more money.

And now we're supposed to be paying 60, 70, 80 dollars or more, for these digital download games.. that we don't even own? And because they have no product on the shelves, prices never come down either. Sure, you might find a sale like on steam or something.. but those sales pale in comparison to what they were 5, 10 years ago

Fuck that. Amazing how the only promise fulfilled on moving to digital download was that pubs/devs would get more money.. and they get that by skyrocketing the costs, not because of the sacrifices we made to give up boxes, disks, manuals, and ownership

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

My main reason for not buying games is that epic and amazon give them away for free.

I've got a backlog of around 500 games I haven't touched or paid for, so there's plenty to do without paying for anything.

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

subscribing to humble monthly is also a good way to amass games on the cheap. not as cheap as free, of course, but still better than most sales.

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago

Well, gee, I wonder why. Not like their money isn't going more for necessities after all

[–] kepix@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

and indie games are cheaper and better

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

Yeah, why would anyone buy another copy of Mario Kart with minor changes for €80 when there's much better indie games for a quarter or less of that price?

[–] WraithGear@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

oh they are talking about AAA and AAAA games, so then they are not buying/playing fewer games but moved to the indie scene.

[–] Mostly_Roblox@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

The seven seas are way more friendly

[–] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 194 points 4 days ago (10 children)

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!

[–] C4551E@lemmy.blahaj.zone 104 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Don't forget to delete last year's version from all your customers' hard drives!

[–] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 53 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Look: we just removed the game from your account so you can purchase the new one without regrets!

[–] The_Helmet_Stays_On@lemmy.dbzer0.com 44 points 4 days ago (6 children)

A collectors edition that doesn’t include the game either.

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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 32 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

From my perspective as a millennial, people are running out of time and energy too.

Like, I know a couple, both working, no kids, avid and techy gamers who know to play stuff like KCDII, yet they mostly plop down for YouTube at the end of the day. A VG or longer form TV is too draining, and too long.

[–] OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works 20 points 3 days ago

Video games have been my biggest hobbies for basically my entire life, but I barely play them anymore for basically this reason.

[–] ifmu@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

For me, I didn’t have the mental energy. At a previous job, I was so mentally strained working 8 hours nonstop on highly mentally taxing tasks that even if I wanted to play a game, it felt like a chore rather than something I can enjoy or wind down to. Even if I had the time, since I do other stuff outside of work.

The strange thing is, when I work I have the money but not the time nor energy to justify buying games to sink time into. When I don’t work I have the time and energy but not the money to justify paying $80-$100 on a game I probably won’t play as much as I think otherwise.

I’ve in recent years looking more into reviews and such to weigh in whether or not I want to buy the game in the first place. Compare that to years prior when I could look at a trailer or short snippet and get a good idea of what the game has to offer. Now I’m more weary of grindy game mechanics and predatory micro transactions.

[–] Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world 27 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yeah. People have no money. Ask one of the billionaires to prop up this failing industry.

Edit: /s

[–] hansolo@sh.itjust.works 17 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Y'all, this market is beyond saturated. And the AI gaming people are flOOOoding the space with more and more stuff.

In terms of a fun way to spend an hour or two, or a few go-to games, there's unlimited options, many free or free enough. Meanwhile, everyone churning out titles expects full attention and wishlist and dropping $50 on them for simply existing.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

I don't really follow current games. Is there actually a huge increase of AI games?

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There are also some games with active modding communities that can be played basically forever without getting boring.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Even without modding I have in the last couple of years found myself mainly in a cycle of playing the same emergent gameplay (were the game-space and/or game characters are random) games, one game at a time until I get bored then the next and the next until eventually I'm not bored of the earlier played games anymore and start it again.

These are mostly Indie titles like Factorio, Rimworld and even The Lone Dark in free mode.

The curated experience - which is what most of the AAA stuff is - just doesn't have this infinite replayability.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Is Rimworld worth it? I've seen quite a lot of it, but it looks hard to get into (and it's really expensive for an indie game).

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

It's basically a survival management game where the skills of the peons you control are random and the terrain and broader world are procedurally generated.

Whilst the graphics are simple, the actual gameplay is solid and interesting with enough depth to keep you interested for many hours, The randomly generated per-game terrain and peons means that even though one can get bored after playing for tens of hours (maybe a bit over 100h), after a couple of months playing something else Rimworld is interesting again because whilst the game mechanics don't change between games (hence to a point you do "crack the game"), the game space is different for every game hence the situation your colony finds itself in is different too,

If you like that survival and/or management games it's well worth it if you can get it for 20 bucks or so.

As for the DLCs, I don't think they actually add enough to be worth it.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for the review, that's helpful! How much micromanagement does the game do? Does automation exist?

Important point with the DLCs, that's really good to know!

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 hours ago

You don't control your peons, you mainly define zones were certain things should happen and the peons go and do it.

Zones can be for very low level explicit things (such as "cut all trees in this area" or "mine these iron nodes") or broader activities (for example defining an area for cultivation of a specific plant, were the peons will automatically seed and sow, and you don't even have to assigned specific peons to it).

There are a few single-action commands (say, toggle this machine ON/OFF) but again they're not peon-specific (you just signal that the machine needs to be toggled ON or OFF and somebody will get around to do it),

You can force a specific peon to do a specific action just once, but it's seldom used or useful.

You do normally control your peons directly for warfare, though.

In practice, you vaguely control who does which kind of things and with which priority via a control board where you define priorities per type of activity and per-peon, so basically a high-level management tool.

My impression is that there is a little bit of micromanagement but very little.

[–] chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

Feels a bit like the 80s market crash. Too many low quality games flooding market.

[–] MyNameIsAtticus@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (4 children)

As a old member of Gen Z, i can definitely say the prices aren't helping. A lot of people in my age group just don't work from what i've seen, so with 70$ and sometime 80$ games they aren't going to be buying many. On top of that, and this may just be the people i've exposed myself too, but most of them don't want longer experiences. They'd rather plop down with something like FF14 or Mario Kart and play that over and over and over again. That's not a bad thing, but i definitely think it's not helping. And like i said, this might just be the people i expose myself too.

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[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

there are also almost no new games worth even looking at anymore. There are some, but they are quite rare

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago

In the AAA space, sure

[–] REDACTED 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I sometimes forget GenZ are now adults. Some now do porn.

[–] mapleseedfall@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Well you cant say that without giving some recomendations around here

[–] nman90@lemmy.world 84 points 4 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] Lfrith@lemmy.ca 37 points 4 days 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.

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[–] rockettaco37@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago

Could it be that the economy fucking sucks?

Nope, clearly it's our fault for not just going out and buying stuff.

[–] newthrowaway20@lemmy.world 78 points 4 days ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Judging by the comments, reading the article seems to be a lost art. Here's the image for y'all:

It's very specifically about 18-24 year olds, compared to last year, with video games seeing the steepest decrease.

You can stop complaining about games being soulless, unless you want to claim that wasn't a problem last year. Well, you can, but it's unrelated then. Compared to last year, this age group has felt the need to cut back at everything more so than anyone else.

Here's the thread mentioned in the article. Suspected reason is restarting of student loan payments and difficult job market.

[–] bluesheep@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 days ago

Almost like they have no money to spend after rent and food.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 40 points 3 days ago

  1. Do they have money? I don't have money.

  2. Modern games from major devs fucking suck.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 23 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

They don’t come out with original work that gets 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 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Look outside AAA gaming. It‘s never been better.

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[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 days ago

The whole world is cutting back on everything everywhere as no one wants to be left short if this global economic craziness gets even more out of hand.

[–] Nikls94@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago (9 children)

As a millennial, the games today are mostly shit. I’m currently playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and it’s amazing. I had a blast with DK Bananza as well. Deltarune was nice too. But before that? AstroBot. And before that? I don’t know. Usually I play a demo of a game, if that’s not available I pirate it and play for half an hour or so. If I like it, I buy it. If I don’t like it, I won’t buy it and won’t play any further. And on top of that, a lot of games released today are just remakes of games that themselves released on PS3/Xbox360/PC. I mean "The Last of us remastered"??? That game was released on PS4, so I can just pop it in my PS5 and play it. But now the devs want me to pay $70 to have it a tiny bit better looking?

"Lost Soul Aside" will release later this month. I remember years ago when I first heard of this game, made by a single person (who now got a team of developers from Sony). And I will definitely get that. No demo required.

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[–] ushmel@piefed.world 41 points 4 days ago (16 children)

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.

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