Bloomberg/Schreier: The Video-Game Industry Has a Problem: There Are Too Many Games

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Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
www.bloomberg.com

The Video-Game Industry Has a Problem: There Are Too Many Games

A crowded September for video-game releases illustrates a broader challenge in the market
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Too much to play

On Sept. 4, the independent game developer Team Cherry released Hollow Knight: Silksong, the long-anticipated sequel to an indie gem that was seven years in the making. Reviews pegged it as one of the best games of 2025.

On Sept. 25, the independent game developer Supergiant Games released (the full version of) Hades II, the long-anticipated sequel to an indie gem that was five years in the making. Reviews pegged it as one of the best games of 2025.

Between these two instant classics came a slew of critically acclaimed games, including a remake of the beloved The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, the latest entry in the popular Borderlands franchise and a cooperative puzzle game starring two Lego pieces. There was also a new Dying Light zombie-action game, an intriguing adventure game and a new entry in the longrunning Silent Hill franchise.

And that was just September.
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Over the past few years, the video-game industry has faced a difficult contraction period during which companies have laid off thousands of employees due to flattened growth. There have been many reasons for this shift, such as huge, Covid-era investments that didn't pan out. But one problem stands above the rest — there are too many video games.

In 2024, a staggering 18,626 games were released on Steam, according to SteamDB, a website that tracks data on the popular PC platform. That's an increase of around 93% from 2020, when 9,656 games were released.

This glut of new releases stems from a number of factors, including widening interest in games, the rise of cheaper and easier development tools and lower barriers to entry.

There was once a time when it was impossible to create a video game and get it into people's hands unless you had a publisher that could get you prime shelf position at GameStop and Walmart. But over the past decade, as customers pivoted en masse from physical to digital games, the playing field has been leveled.
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Most of last year's Steam games went undiscovered and unplayed by the majority of users. But a surprising number were received quite well. Of the 1,431 games released last year that garnered more than 500 reviews — an indication that they were played by at least a few thousand people — more than 260 were rated positively by 90% or more of the players. More than 800 scored 80% or better.

In other words, this isn't like the 1980s, when the US gaming market crashed due to a flood of poorly made products. Today, there are too many video games, and many of them are great.

Today's titles are also competing not just with the new games released every year but with countless old "service" games designed to keep people playing forever. The three most-played games on Steam are almost always Counter-Strike, Dota 2 and PUBG: Battlegrounds, all multiplayer games that have been around for years. Some of the other biggest games in the world, such as League of Legends and the top titles on Roblox, would be alongside them if they were on Steam.
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The market for new video games isn't just oversaturated — it's nearly impenetrable. Teams of hundreds of people are spending years of their lives developing games that are destined to get lost in the sea of new releases. It's no longer enough to simply be a good game — more than 120 games released in 2025 have scored higher than an 80 on Metacritic, the review aggregation website. The ones that earn more than a 90 tend to hit, but many of the others have failed to take off.


It's the main reason that games such as Wildgate and Sunderfolk, both developed by Dreamhaven and released this year to positive receptions, struggled to make a dent. The list goes on and on.

I'm not sure there's any solution to this problem. Returning to the era of gatekeepers would be a regression, and the increased democratization of game development has led to more creative and interesting products all around. This glut may be intimidating for players, but it also presents them with more choices than ever before, so long as they can ignore the FOMO of not jumping on every new release as soon as it hits.

But for the companies investing hundreds of millions of dollars into games that need to move huge numbers to break even, this is no small challenge. And it's just getting harder every year.
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What to play this weekend

The "1.0" version of Hades II came out this week after a year of Early Access, and I'm looking forward to spending more time with it. Like its predecessor, this is a roguelike action game set in a beautiful depiction of Greek mythology. The game stars the goddess Melinoe on her quest to defeat the lord of time, Chronos, with the assistance of a whole bunch of other gods (Zeus, Demeter, etc.). Each divinity offers a powerful boon that lets you blow up monsters in various, creative ways. I put a lot of hours into the first game, and the sequel appears to be bigger and better.
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Happy Spongebob Squarepants GIF
 
On one hand yeah, it's kid of ridiculous. On the other hand it's absolutely an issue for Publishers and Devs.

Think how many amazing games are there that are readily available on Steam. Now add thousands more coming out every year. And bunch of those older games with great ratings and gameplay can be had for cheap.

So not only are new releases fighting against a multitude of other new releases, they are fighting against 20 years worth of great games that can be had for a few $€£¥.
 
Too many subpar and downright shite games aye.

Even some I've enjoyed quite a bit recently I feel like they were struggling to come up with innovation/engaging gameplay: DK: Bananza and Sword of the Sea for example, they repeated the same concepts so often.

The upside to it is I hope that means they were both side-games made to make a bit of money while the studios are working on their proper next big release, 3D Mario and whatever Giant Squid do next. Though I have less faith thats what was happening with Giant Squid, I think they've just ran out of ideas sadly.

Sometimes its hard to know if its just me being a depressed cunt though heh.

edit: Not saying there aren't great games this year or recently, there are a ton, just theres also been more letdowns than ever for me.
 
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I've got over 400 free ones sitting in my Epic Store library.
Dozens of Netflix games on my cellphone.
Hundreds of Gamepass games
Lots of games I bought on Steam and GoG.
As well as all the VR stuff on my Quest 3.

All that and still there is nothing to play.
 
100% accurate. It is a major problem for them, but a huge windfall for us.

Even if you managed to spend a fortune to buy all these games, you wouldn't be able to physically play them. Many of these games are destined to fail, and that's completely fine. They should fail if they can't attract an audience. Many of these infinite amounts of devs will have to find somewhere else to work, either in large teams, small teams, or another industry entirely. Again, this is fine.

There simply aren't enough hours in the day to support every person in the world that wants to be a game developer. Feel free to keep trying though. Been a golden age of gaming for me this gen. I have enough to play until I'm dead already.

By the way, what he's describing is the actual devaluing that is the boogeyman on GAF. The actual devaluing is what the industry did to itself. Gamepass is just providing an option for people to play stuff at a correct rental price. The people crying about Gamepass are trying to enforce price controls because games have lost their value all on their own, while their costs are going up.
 
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I have been saying this about Xbox for a while, I have been sending messages to Phil on Xbox live complaining about the amount of games they are pumping out, I think thats why they have killed off a few games this year 🟢💪
 
There are to many games and a lot of them are white
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edit:So, these clowns actually belive every game should be played by everyone, that every game has the duty and responsibility to appeal to all gamers... The only problem the videogame industry has is:
"The Woke"
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But I bet we won't hear that from these so-called video game "journalists". uh.
 
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The market for new video games isn't just oversaturated — it's nearly impenetrable. Teams of hundreds of people are spending years of their lives developing games that are destined to get lost in the sea of new releases. It's no longer enough to simply be a good game — more than 120 games released in 2025 have scored higher than an 80 on Metacritic, the review aggregation website. The ones that earn more than a 90 tend to hit, but many of the others have failed to take off.


It's the main reason that games such as Wildgate and Sunderfolk, both developed by Dreamhaven and released this year to positive receptions, struggled to make a dent. The list goes on and on.
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Weird. If only we had some sort of rental service that could pay developers up front, dramatically help exposure for their game, and lower the barrier of entry so people will still try it even with a sea of games releasing.
 
I'd bet most of these games are slop. I saw a video on YouTube where they literally had the same problem in the 80's on Atari, I think. Too many games being released to the point where they would just send the cartridges straight to the trash. It's a problem but it'll fix itself with a bunch of companies going bankrupt.
 
September is always a loaded month. It's the end of the quarter, end of the fiscal year, companies want to get their games out, they want them to be on store shelves for Christmas. It's been like this as long as I can remember. So complaining about this is like complaining that water is wet.
 
I think the point is that it's hurting sales of smaller developers.

I work full time, have a family and other hobbies. I don't have time for all these fantastic games. Hades 2 looks great, but It'll be years before I purchase it. That is if I buy it at all. I just have too many other games on my "to play" list.

Not a problem for me really. Possibly a problem for the industry.
 
It's fine, you don't have to play all September 2025 games in September 2025. You can play them months, years later... You don't have to play everything either. It's fine that some games won't sell, that's just how it is, and the market will balance itself inevitably. People can always move on to some other activity.
 
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AI will only accelerate the abundance, this flood isn't slowing down, it's only starting up.

Publishers literally cannot afford to have divisive studios, leadership or marketers, there are simply too many increasing alternative options by the day.

It's increasingly becoming too easy to just ignore bullshit instead of being outraged, the next best thing is only a day away.

You cannot hold audiences captive because of scarcity anymore, dangerous assumption.
 
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Punished Miku said:
Weird. If only we had some sort of rental service that could pay developers up front, dramatically help exposure for their game, and lower the barrier of entry so people will still try it even with a sea of games releasing.
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The industry you're thinking of wasn't built and supported by a rental service. It was built and supported based on pay full price, up front, no returns.
 
It is certainly a problem if the goal was to keep everyone who works in gaming working on new games. But that's not the goal, and it never has been. This isn't communism.

The free market will sort this out. The best games will rise to the top, sell well, and those studios and workers will get the opportunities to continue making more games. The developers who don't make games that sell enough to continue with a new project, won't.
 
cireza said:
It's fine, you don't have to play all September 2025 games in September 2025. You can play them months, years later... You don't have to play everything either. It's fine that some games won't sell, that's just how it is, and the market will balance itself inevitably. People can always move on to some other activity.
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Yep. The video game industry isn't the first to suffer from over-supply. Markets adjust.
 
He's right, but people like him are at fault.

The games media spent the early 2010s aggressively brigading for storefronts to open themselves up to indie games, particularly on console. It even fed into the console wars. The first wave was good, but that's because there was still massive curation and a barrier to entry.

Post brigade, the curation is nonexistent. Mixed with a booming game industry and cheap investment loaning, too many cats got into the dev scene and too much talent was dispersed around teams and projects that ultimately will go or have gone nowhere fast. Compare "indies" of 2011-2015 to what we've been getting since at least 2020. It's embarrassing.

That's just one of the ills the games journalist/punditry class has inflicted on the medium.
 
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