Background footage is from Stalker Anomaly btw

hopefully we will see the live service trend calm down significantly in the next few years. not every game needs to last forever. just release a good game

what you're saying is part of it. It's also the fact lots of those are live service games, and people aren't going to play 4 different live services, so it ends up a winner takes all market. You either get big and get all the money, or you're pissing it away needlessly.

I feel like the one thing you’re missing is that it barely feels like the publishers even market their games past the launch point. It’s absurd that so many people go “oh I didn’t know this released yet” or “I forgot this game existed” I agree with the notion of over saturation of the market, but at the same time some of these devs don’t even try. [Edit] Cannot believe I have to say this. Yes obviously it’s not the devs fault the majority of the time a game fails, but to say devs can’t put out a bad product as well is just a terrible mindset to have. I’m best friends with a game developer as well and he can tell you straight up that’s there’s both skilled people who care about their work. And others who will just throw anything together to get a quick buck. Just like any other business field. Let me reiterate for the people who will read this and automatically disagree. Like i said it’s not always the devs faults, but sometimes devs can just put out a terrible product and sometimes they need to be called out. Good example if 343 and what they’re doing with halo. Yes there are talented individuals on that team, but for like a decade no matter what level it is there’s signs of major incompetence. Not everything is the fault of incompetence from the leaders now and some times it’s okay to hold people accountable respectfully of course.

I think most of them which are cancelled recently are mostly live-service games. As you said now things are back to normal and we're all back to work and have less free time in our hands. By all this shutdowns, I do hope companies finally realised not every single game needs to be live-service for a quick cash-grab. But actually thanks to them, now there is way more audience than before who are down for some single players or indie games. SPECIALLY INDIE GAMES😂

I'm hoping singleplayer games start getting more popular

So happy to see you also a fan of Stalker

I'm inclined to agree. Unfortunately, shortsighted execs who only live in the now will greenlight projects that are based on a temporarily inflated industry. I want to see the gaming industry thrive and continue to expand, but the rate of expansion fueled by the pandemic wasn't permanent. On a side note, cool to see some footage of Stalker! Hope you're enjoying the experience.

I have to disagree about apex competitor part. I think they NEVER expected PC and console players to switch to mobile. Instead they were trying to bring in new players to their game via mobile. In many developing countries like India, most people especially in recent years, have become avid Gamers... Mobile Gamers. This is cause Gaming pcs are expensive and consoles arent general use computers, wired internet isnt spot on, but cellular net is decently good and growing. Pubg mobile, freefire, are Extremely popular here. Kids pour good microtransaction money for mobile games.

literally a gaming bubble

I'm surprised that a mobile game is shutting down since the mobile market is larger. Maybe it didn't get popular enough in Asia?

After he recent mass layoffs, I spoke to someone in the industry and they said a similar thing about a pandemic-based bubble. He wasn't too worried about it though, as apparently this rise and fall is common.

The looming Financial Crash...

Personally, I think that has to do with a large number of factors, including everything you've said here. On top of that however, you may have noticed a number of large titles have also been bringing fan requested updates. I know you are aware of Apex Legends for example, in about 3 hours from this comment being posted, they will be making the single most influential update since the release of the game. and many of these changes are things fans have been begging for. Look at all the quality of life updates GTA Online has had over the last 6 months, the fan requested updates MW2 is getting. I feel like pre-pandemic had a pretty "obedient" fanbase. People complained just as much as they do now, but they stayed playing the games anyways. But now, over the last little bit and the next while, a lot of those same players are having their newer friends leave because they are less likely to stick around when better things come their way. Having your friends quit is far more impactful to a user quitting, than any update. So by refocussing on QoL updates, these games are finally giving those players who have been asking for QoL updates for years, what they've been asking. Only NOW is it more profitable to focus on loss prevention, than it is to focus on MTX, and new projects.

Don't scare me like that Garbaj. I thought stalker 2 was getting shut down.

A game I was very fond of called Durango: Wild Lands, a online survival game that had to shut down its servers in 2019. It had a lot of diversity in playstyle and a nice story. You could tame dinosaurs and other animals, or sell them in the player's market. It encouraged players to cover each other's weaknesses since the skill tree greatly changed what you could and couldn't do, so you could rely on your friends and guild members. You could "hire" other players to help you with a quest or crafting, and reward them with items. You could rescue downed players around the map and help them reach safety. But even then, the game still let you go solo I you wanted. It was heartbreaking for me to see such a fun and promising game have an early end just like that.

We saw it in GPU’s. They are playing the market like it’s pandemic time still. It’s insane. Execs live in coocoo land and don’t think past next week. For better or worse.

I think its not the number of titles but rather that they were almost all live service games. If they had all been singleplayer titles I don't think this would happen because you wouldn't expect people to play for more than 40 hours after purchase.

Love the Stalker gameplay in the background! Anomaly?

Love the anomaly gameplay in the background!!!!

good analysis presented succinctly thank you garbaj :)

love your videos man keep it up

It hasn't been 3-4 years. It's been 2 years

I really think that summer of 2020 was a renaissance for online multiplayer games. I never had more fun. I don't think I ever will. I don't think that many regular people (non-gamers/new gamers) will come together like that again. It was a cultural phenomenon. Now it's back to mostly kids and pros. It's... less and less my scene these days. After a day of surviving it was truly healing to come back to Verdansk and connect with my brother. It's just not the same anymore.

What game is you playing in the background?

I think that this is a really good explanation for what's happening and can see your logic. I've never thought about it before but I wouldn't be surprised if you're right about it

What's that game you're playing in the background

games are cool.

My dad is a computer programmer and he is having trouble getting a job with all of these companies laying off workers they don’t need. Even with 20 years experience in the industry

I think you're right here, especially considering that Battlefield Mobile has also been discontinued, and precisely because of your reasoning. They wanted to build more on Battlefield 2042 and the mobile spin-off didn't fit into the Battlefield vision EA has now. On the other hand, Call of Duty Mobile works very well.

Good analysis!

Another reason is not having a solid community. Apex mobile cant compete to the online communities Codmobile, pubgmobile have made. There are many yt channels and subreddits dedicated to these games. Genshin impact releases an update, and within hours there are millions of views on the youtubers covering it

You surely love that tree my guy, also interesting update on the industry.

The thumbnail scared the shit out of me because i thought that dayz is gone

Another reason is that they are probably to scared to be busted by a new indie game called Booty Blastin'

I love your take on this

the backround footage is so nice

Okay, so I'm definitely seeing your point here, and I have a question that is kinda related but also not: There are online games older than a decade which I'm pretty sure aren't really played any more(example Order & Chaos Online(2011 by Gameloft)) but the servers are still running even though I can't imagine those games still give revenue(electricity costs+servers that could be redidedicated vs in-game purchases which are prob near 0). So why ARE they still running? They're usually not even downloadble any more without use of APKs or similar.

The Stalker Anomaly footage made me panic that this was about Stalker 2

This is kind of similar to the video game crash of 1983: many low quality, low effort games and not enough players to play or even want them.

rest in piece, Echo VR.

It’s because interest rates are skyhigh, game publishers are businesses and they have a lot of debt on their books they need to pay interest on, so they’re tightening up with layoffs and consolidation. Sometimes people get a little too narrow with their theories about the gaming market

This is the first time seeing a youtuber play stalker in the background. Welcome to the zone STALKER...

Welp. I don't keep up with news Thanks

I think it has more to do with the upcoming recession. There less opportunities for risky ventures and many game companies are getting employees and cancelling projects. But this theory could also be apart of it.

Could also do with massive layoffs-essentially canceling projects or stopping living ones to save money.

I think your on to something plus the looming recession and collapse of the nft/crypto space that a lot of companies were looking to get a slice of probably is contributing to many projects getting canned, probably for the best really.

After working in production for a few years (broadcast, not games) I've developed a new perspective on things like this. Knowing that the two products are not linked (Mobile and the core game) it makes a lot more sense that it's a backend resource allocation issue and a lot less of a market manuever. I doubt EA cares about the long term health of their economy, or that they are worried that dollars customers put into Apex Mobile strikes against the core game... because a dollar is a dollar. However, it makes a lot more sense that companies are realizing that they are spreading themselves too thin and are consolidating their resources: Why pay for hundreds of employees, maintenance, and oversight on a side project that - while a net positive - isn't bringing home the big bucks? Big corporations don't give much thought to things like market saturation or customer appreciation - but they care a lot about things like shareholder meetings and major releases; shareholders like to see low overhead and concentrated spending on potent products, and major releases are demanding. Instead of EA looking at Apex mobile and striking it to make room for Apex to get bigger, it is highly likely that they either liquidated studio assets or consolidated them into other development efforts. Apex Mobile is probably making money, but how much manpower and creative effort is EA willing to sink into it? Probably not a lot. With the recession and people returning to work with desperation - the market has deflated. Everyone has been playing catchup with Fortnite, using the same tired Free-To-Play-Battlepass-Fear-Of-Missing-Out plan. What we're also seeing is a lot of these games (FTP BP FOMO) repeating what happened to MMOs back in the 2000's. WoW ate up the market and nobody could compete, because buy-in for this model is mutually exclusive - you simply can't have customers pay dividends to engage with your live service model. I don't disagree with what is being said in this video outright - but I do think that it's less about giant corporations looking for a healthier market due to deflation than it is that their money-trees are dying up and they have to refocus their efforts on more legitimate productions in the eyes of shareholders.

Yes I believe one off the reason is what you said on the video, however I believe that is more than 1 reasons like for example not many players Or need servers for other projects The are multiple factor's that may happen it's very hard to know the true reason this happens

whole thing sucks like ideally any game shutting down would just release the server code and let fans host their own games, but this creates vulnerabilities in still running games if theres a shared exploit. maybe if anti-cheat and user privacy stuff was modular and could be replaced with an open source standard or something...

As an insider from the industry, recently investment in risky businesses like entertainment has declined due to the (maybe) incoming recession. Truth is, things were looking bad before covid and we still don't know if the global economy will resist. The Ukraine war has also had an impact. Personally, I'm not too worried, the videogames business grows and shrinks but in the end it tends to go up. We will have to wait and see, if it turns out being really bad, videogames will be the least of our problems.

Love that you used stalker for background

Even in vr space, echo vr (one of the best vr e-sports game) was announced to shut down in that period of time

I didn't think about it like that but it is a really good point i think also because of the energy price increases the cost of running servers would have doubled and if they are not selling enough micro transactions/battle passes etc, ppl aren't playing because they don't have the time so the game doesn't make a profit so they shut down the one that makes the least. I don't play Apex but isn't it also free to download? if so they don't even break even or make a profit on initial release either.

I think the rise of the steam deck would also be relating to mobile gaming finally having some issues

I'm a indie game dev, when the pandemic began I tought "This is my time", well I realise that I cannot simply print games, I'm just one person and if I want a fair chance I should do something perfectly calculated or I'll just pass as an simple indie game dev. Turns out the crisis just helped (in a big meaningfull way) big companies who can print games that sell even if only by hype.

Ah, the wonders of Anomaly. Might be up there in the "Top 10 Time Sinks" alongside F:NV.

"A bunch" cites 1.

Bro I saw the title and recognized Anomaly in the thumbnail, and you had me super worried that someone starting protecting the IP of the original STALKER games and the mods were getting shut down. 😂

I guess devs have been very busy the past few years. An upped graphical standard, new game development software and harder market competition. They needed to be creative, experimental and take risks, resulting in some good stuff but also a lot of learning.

Sounds about right.

hey nice info. i subscribed

honestly i hate most of the live service games. but knockout city was different, the mechanics were soooo good for a live service game. its a shame that they are shutting down the servers.

I got too immersed in your S.t.a.l.k.e.r gameplay that I forgot that you're making video announcement. What faction are you on? I see you're friendly with Duty

Yup that’s probably what’s happening.

I think you hit the nail right on the head

I really want a narrative driven Predator single player game!

I came for the development updates and I stayed for the game news

well also adding at the major lay-offs at most triple A studios there are multiple reasons for this but the less overall people gaming since the pandemic is def one of the main contributors to this

Damn almost like we're in a recession

Not just that apex mobile was competing with pc/xbox apex, but EA also wasn't profiting as much from apex mobile. From what I've read up on, EA was spending around 6 to 10 million a month developing and running apex mobile, and they were profiting around 2 million a month, those two things were probably the main reasons for apex mobiles closure.

And people wonder why I like single player and indie games more than total multiplayer ones.

This gives me flashbacks to the whole zombie shooter craze in the 2010s Kinda worse now since so many live services are designed to suck up all your time so very few actually want to play, in alternative to games you can play whenever you want at your own pace like co-op/Singleplayer games

dat recession

You're partly right. 1: tech over hired during COVID. 2: there's a recession coming and the publishers are scared, 3: the mobile market specifically has dipped in the last 2 quarters. 4: the fiscal year ends in March, so they often do mass layoffs to make the numbers look good, and then they hire many of these people back come April and March and then spend 3x as much doing it. I was part of the mass layoffs at EA 2 weeks ago :)

Funny that a lot of games that would probably suit battle passes dont really get them like for a new elder scrolls months after you get new quests and items or maybe counter strike

Plausible but id say its maybe to do with interest rates. New games need bankroll and with it being basically zero % interest rates over the last 14 years cheap money to bank roll anything for big companies was easy. Good credit rating, meant cheap loans of 0 or nearly 0%. Now the fed has pushed interest rates up to nearly 5% cheap money is no more. Id say its probably a combination of the 2 honestly. Huge tech sector layoffs have happened so its an industry that feels these raises the most.

So, I work in AAA, and the last few years have been really brutal for mass layoffs and acquisitions. Especially with mobile games because you need a specific talent pool for that. Unlike PC/Console titles, the developers/sysadmins/etc who work on mobile don't get moved to another project if it fails because mobile was the reason they were hired in the first place.

dang bro the video scared me i thought anomaly got shut down or something

Short answer: greedy mr krabs companies shutting down unprofitable projects...

Peace and love shall by over all

@Garbaj which STALKER mods are you using? Is this a modpack or something?

People really underestimate mobile gaming. Here in India, a low end gaming PC is using Integrated graphics and high end is using something like 3050. So most people have no option but to play on mobiles because it's very difficult for them to get a good gaming PC or console from their parents.

i remember the whole Gamespy bit for PC gaming

Actually the main reason was call of duty mobile had more content than apex mobile, and the battle pass price and content were good in codm than apexm. Besides all that cod mobile devs always listened to the community requests and did their best to achieve those requests while apex ignored them and caused their game to die (everyone stopped playing apex mobile because it was just badly optimized and devs weren’t listening at all they wanted money) to wrap it up no one was able to get a refund on the items they purchased (even on purchased items in the past 30 days were not refunded). And they recommended to spend all the premium currency before the shut down instead of giving refund. And many other EA mobile games went to shutdown because of dead servers (ex: battlefield mobile, real racing 4 project, nfs mobile…etc) in other words EA saw their bad quality games can’t fit in the mobile market if some indie developer can do it 10 times better than them, so they gave up.

It's such a shame that at least 20 years' worth of games as a service will be likely impossible for most people to try given enough time.

Bro you got me scared cause you had anomaly in the background and I thought that's what you were talking about

what is the game you are playing on the background?

Honestly it's definitely because of how many games have battlepasses now. It's gotten to the point where personally, I just don't play anything but one or two games if they have a battlepass each, and even then I'll just play the one I enjoy more because of it.

I agree with you 100%

probably has something to do with silicon valley bank

Heroes and generals is also going down soon, it may have to do with power costs for servers, but im not too sure h&g was losing money for years, so im not sure

Echo VR was shut down, for no reason. High player count, a sprawling community, and at the drop of a hat, gone.

bro had a whole ass aug in his inventory

When I saw you playing Anomaly my heart dropped, thought Stalker 2 got canceled

background game I believe is S.T.A.L.K.E.R

I think game companies scaled up the same way the bigger IT based companies did during the pandemic. Now they have to cut costs and have layoff and therefor less resources. With less resources companies now got to evaluate where to focus on, and some projects has to be cut.

This may have to do with the new Directx 12 ultimate technology, which forces you to practically buy a new GPU, as well as the new requirements of video games, which makes me think that they may plan to do the same as with phones...every so often You will have to change your hardware and with this also buy software accordingly so only they win

The fog is coming

never expected to see anomaly gameplay on this channel shout-out to my fellow stalkers