Video games spending by young Americans is dropping sharply, report suggests
The average weekly spending by 18-24 year-old Americans on video games has dropped sharply year-over-year, according to…
Looks at:
I WONDER WHY YOUNG PEOPLE SPEND LESS IN VIDEOGAMES...
Also competition, and I'm not actually talking about indie games, although that's helping. Competition with older games. Why in the world would someone pay $80 for a mediocre new game when they could replay a classic hit that they haven't played in few years? When was the last time you played the witcher 3, or the mass effect trilogy? Would you rather replay one of those, or pay $80 for the new assassin's creed?
There's also lots of (frequently not even that) old games that I never got around to/never heard about that I can now get on sale for 5$ or whatever, so it's not always a matter of replaying.
Just (re) started Dead Space after not playing it for 10-15 years. Still good, still enjoy, why buy when I can just replay games I've forgotten the story to?
Same for Control a few months ago... And I'm sure others.
Especially when most games that've come out this year run like shit, and a new graphics card is nearly a rent payment
I am playing a new character in Elder Scrolls 3 - Morrowind right now. The modding community for that game is so good, with OpenMW (a open source engine rebuild) and the tool "umo" it was so easy to install a curated mod list that not only upscaled the graphics but also extended the game with not only a huge part of the Morrowind mainland but also parts of cyrodiil and Skyrim. So much new content and places to explore now!
I replay TLOU, TLOU 2 and Days Gone yearly.
I used to play new big AAA games, but none of them seem interesting these days.
I'd rather replay old games that are top tier than waste time on mediocre new crap.
I'm current stuck in a long term cycle of mainly Project Zomboid, Factorio, Valheim, Oxygen Not Included, The Lone Dark and Rimworld, were when I'm fed up of playing the last of them, it's been long enough since I played the first one that it's once interesting to play it.
Even when I manage to be fed up with playing all of them at any one point, I still have other progression games with complex emergent gameplay (often but not always games which have algorithmically generated game areas) like Kenshi. 7 Days to Die or OpenTTD that pull me in and if that fails, I can always pick up one of the old open world roleplay jewels such as Skyrim and play that.
I've barelly tried anything else in the last couple of years and of those only Oxygen Not Include was the only one with any lasting power and I picked that one years ago.
It's not even because I can't afford it (though out of principl I refuse to pay more than €20 for a game) - whenever I try an AAA game nowadays (always games that came out years ago) it's almost invariably an inferior experience that either feels too constrained or doesn't have enough gameplay variety and complexity to be fun for long.
Studies conducted at my desk and on my couch have also found a downward trend in video game quality.
I'm a pretty conservative game purchaser. I've never paid over $40 for a game (including games on sale) because there are so, so many amazing indie games on Steam that charge so little for many hours of fun.
When I see a AAA game come out, I know it's going to be profit-driven, uninspired, and rushed because it exists solely for the purpose of making money for a large corp. For that reason (among others), I avoid them altogether because I know my dollar goes way further going toward an independent developer who makes games for passion (and only sometimes for money). The passion always shines through in their work, unlike passionless AAA games.
That and broad, massive economic collapse in basically every other sector, at least in the US.
Can't play vidya gaem if hev no food starve.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/adp-jobs-report-june-2025.html
Oops.
Labor market (# of actual jobs) is now actually net contracting, shrinking.
Expected: +100k jobs
Reality: -33k jobs
Firings / Layoffs > Hiring.
Also the population grows, so uh, it actually has to be something like +200k to +250k to remain steady in terms of working age people vs jobs.
Sure, there are lots of 'job openings', but they're all fake ghost job bullshit that never actually hire anyone.
And they don't pay enough to bother doing them, and they have insane requirements that make no sense.
Great Depression 2.0 Gaming!
(The housing market is also collapsing if any readers haven't been paying attention.
My semi-educated guess is about a 55% drop by 24 months from now, compared to roughly '23-'24 highs.
Hope your boomer parents didn't buy in the last 5 years rofl!)
Don't forget all the online requirements with accounts even if you want to play single player, and constant server issues on launch that seem to happen with every game now because none of them allow community servers anymore.
Yup, no way to figured this one out.
Also, the games market was brought up a lot by the global pandemic and had to come down eventually.
Also, with the speed that games have been coming out the last 20 years, there’s always something on sale to play
Free games like fortnite
I'm sure it has nothing to do with shitty half baked $70 games
and the microtransactions inside them. and the underwhelming day 1 dlc.
with no new ideas and safe bets only.
What else am I missing?
Not fixed later, fixed maybe.
Thankfully, indie-dev is epic right this moment! Lot's of lesser known but very fun games coming out.
As a rule, I never buy games on release. From everything I hear, you pay twice the price to get an unfinished game in most cases.
I put them on my wishlist, keep an eye on the reviews and depending on those I decide how much of a discount it will require for me to actually buy the game. Usually I end up getting them at least a year later and/or at least at 50% off.
Games are getting more expensive. Console prices are going nuts; the Playstation 2 launched at $299 USD.
Wages have been stagnant longer than I've been alive. More and more people are struggling to make ends meet let alone buy luxuries like video games, particularly the young because of our kleptogeriocracy.
Younger folks often use video games as a hangout spot, because young folks hanging out together in public is a felony now. So they play the same few games for tens of thousands of hours. Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, I think the crowd that spend their adolescences in Garrysmod are in the attrition phase. You've already got a copy of these games, why buy another?
A lot of studios are being closed because business major's gonna business. Fuck brand recognition or loyalty, fuck development talent, fuck community building, fuck long-term strategy, we can realize a gain right now by sowing half the planet with salt, so that's what we're going to do. So what is there for people to buy?
That noise you heard last week was Xbox's death rattle. One out of the three mainstream home console platforms is an outright stupid idea to buy now.
+1 to literally everything.
Fuck brand recognition or loyalty, fuck development talent, fuck community building, fuck long-term strategy, we can realize a gain right now by sowing half the planet with salt, so that’s what we’re going to do. So what is there for people to buy?
I wish this would fit on a bumpersticker.
That noise you heard last week was Xbox’s death rattle. One out of the three mainstream home console platforms is an outright stupid idea to buy now.
And wasn't Sony the big risk of bowing out before? And then we got the Switch 2... It's remarkable that Microsoft somehow made Xbox the least likely to survive.
because of our kleptogeriocracy
Because of our what?
thieving old ruling class.
Rule by elderly thieves. Klepto-geri-ocracy.
Old people be stealing
I bet you money right now that the next Xbox will be the best selling Xbox ever.
If I understand the situation, they're rebranding an Asus ROG handheld, which I imagine isn't going to outsell the Steam Deck or whatever the thing Lenovo is shipping with both Windows or SteamOS on, because they're late to the game and they'll fuck it up somehow, and I give 50/50 odds that there will be an announcement that they're cancelling the next home console launch.
Ends meat*
Video gamesspending by young Americans is dropping
FTFY
Who would have thought that if you squeeze out every single penny out of 99% of Americans to pocket them, 99% of Americans would have no penny left to spend?
Some American billionaire probably
I love the constant onslaught of articles that are like “people aren’t spending money anymore!!!” Open your damn eyes. We all got smart and refuse to pay $80 (which is now the new forced norm for “AAA” garbage) and are replaying oldies and indies. Hell, I revamped my 3DS and have dumped a ton of games onto it. I can even play some of them online with people again via Pretendo.
Like all of the reasons are so obvious why people aren’t dumping money into this industry anymore. Capitalists fucked it all up and put profit over fun. We’re not all dipshits that fall for the constant micro transactions and grifts.
I legit don’t give a single shit about any of the new “AAA” games coming out. Give me a call when they’re in the bargain bin years from now.
Exactly this. The new game cycle these days is:
Like genuinely who wants to bother with that nonsense anymore TBH.
Give me a call when they’re in the bargain bin years from now.
If they're still functional, thankfully there's the Stop Killing Games movement.
I love the movement that has gotten. I’m cheering for it.
People are dumping money still, revenue isn’t shrinking
Yeah, I think the decline is a drop in a bucket considering. I know plenty of people still buying the Switch 2 etc. on launch day.
Somewhere out there is an article by someone who walked around a games conference and came away from the experience horrified that so much of the content he was seeing was from small indie studios who weren’t in a position to hire wastes of oxygen like himself, and was furiously nail-biting about what this would do to the state of the industry.
Related news is the authors of Dave the Diver having to explain that they are in no way an independent studio, and they do not deserve the award they just received for “best independent blah blah,” because “indie” has at this point simply become completely synonymous with “original and good.”
Related news is the authors of Dave the Diver having to explain that they are in no way an independent studio
To save people from looking it up: The studio that made Dave the Diver is traded on the Tokyo stock exchange, has 7,000 employees, and brings in $2 billion USD per year.
We can't justify the price. The end. That's it.
I was super interested in the Dune game, then they decided to not participate in the stream sale. Okay. Too bad. Life goes on. Get fucked, greedy devs.
greedy devs
Publishers, mostly.
Nitpick: It's probably not the devs so much as the capitalist owners and management collaborators. I'd guess most of the people making the games would be happy to have someone play their game at all. It's not like they typically get a cut of the profits (again: capitalism)
It's the publishers. They're in control of any discounts or sales. Steam sale or otherwise.
Eh. I know what all PvP centric games turn into unless you're willing to devote a fuckton of hours into it and get into a great guild. I'll pass.
I will say though, if you're the kind of guy who likes MMOs and RPGs (like me) you'll love dune.
I used to play a ton of RuneScape back in the day, and recently I've been playing Eve and Star Citizen but dune is just a better game in every possible way than those three. I've been so obsessed that I had to uninstall it this week so I could get to sleep on time for work haha
It's a two part answer.
One, gamers have less money to spend, along with everyone else.
Two, expensive AAA title games these days tend to be shit, from a graphics, code, community, and content standpoint. If you want good games, cheaper is usually better.
Last AAA title game I bought was Borderlands 3, and I don't see myself buying anymore in the next two years or so.
I got shadow of mordor on a huge discount and it still barely felt worth it.
Don't forget about microtransactions, they might be a significant portion of the decline.
I lost my last nerve with Gearbox when I had to figure out how to remove ads in a Borderlands game. No way they're going to subject me to an ad for a game I would have otherwise bought.
And now BL3 is literally $3 on steam. I paid fucking $60 or $70 for it. Whatever it was.
I'm just done with Capitalism in general. I got 1000 games, 200 of which are GOG offline installers. Those are burned onto M-Disc storage for the apocalypse. Cancelled all TV streaming, no buying games or books even. Nothing but food and bills now as I wait for it all to collapse.
I got 1000 games, 200 of which are GOG offline installers.
Nothing but food and bills now as I wait for it all to collapse.
While I'll believe that you have solid storage longevity, prepping for societal collapse by archiving 1000 video games seems kind of unorthodox.
Hey, having access to entertainment is actually pretty damn important. What you gonna do to pass the time?
Though honestly, wasting the limited power someone would have after the grid fails on gaming isn't the brightest of ideas.
Not to mention, after the collapse, free time will basically be a rare luxury. Your entire time would be taken up by surviving and maintaining your ability to continue to survive, especially if you aren't preconfiguring a community support network for when shit hits the fan and just going the "lone prepper" route.
M-Disc
woah woah woah, Mr. Namedrop. What is this, now? 100GB RW Blu-rays? $57 for a pack of 6?
$57 for 600GB
$100 for a 4TB WD Red
the hard drive won't last as long
That implies it's powered. Would it last as long as cold storage? (with running disk checks every six months)
...this is so offtopic, but I must know.
Hard drives are affected by bit rot even when not in use. A disk check every six months would help, but is not a guarantee against data corruption or loss. M-DISCs are physically etched, and should last around a lifetime to a thousand years, depending on who you believe. The catch would be being able to read it in the distant future (in other words, if you're using M-DISC as a backup solution, you should also have a backup disc drive).
M-Discs are just like Blu-ray storage. However, they are not re-writable, instead being physically engraved with a laser. They are marketed as lasting 1000 years. Get yourself a nice Bluray-writer and you're all set.
If everyone thought like you, we'd all be dead.
The Cult of Consumption
The hobby is getting more expensive while income left over after cost of living is going down. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
They're charging more money for lower quality games. Glad less people are buying.
I’m pushing 40 so I’m not young but I’ve actually been buying more games lately thanks to being patient and not rushing out to buy AAA games along with switching from console to PC, gotta love Steam sales. I just bought two games I’ve been wanting to play for $30.
Exactly, picked up RDR2, AC Odyssey and Bloodborne for about $45 recently. This constant pressure to move people toward a subscription model only works if there's trust. Too much bullshit = shrinking sales
I picked up three games for mad cheap that I've pirated for a long time. I'll give you money devs, if the price is right.
I'm a bit younger, though not a lot.
I all but stopped buying games because Epic and Amazon give so many away for free.
I've got like 500 free games that I haven't even installed once.
The only time I'd actually pay for a game is if it's a special one I want, and they've gotten few and far between.
Older games are better plus gamers can play all our existing games.
This is why publisher's are trying to derail "Stop Killing Games."
When they are done with a a game the don't WANT you to continue to play and enjoy it....
...they want you to forget about it and buy the next product they have and financially engage with the microtransaction ecosystem
Ugh first millennials aren't buying homes fast enough now it's this darn gen Z and not buying video games and 12 different streaming platforms. Such spoiled generations
Saw this stupid fucking headline on some magazine a coworker left behind today.
Gross
Melissa Bourgeois
Hmmm, I dunno if I trust her, guys...
How dare they? They should be starving themselves so they can play great art such as Concord.
Every game or movie that comes out now is a reboot/remake. Why would I buy that? I already bought that.
Definitely not true in the case of games.
Charging 70 dollars USD for barely 40 USD of content and everyone knows. The only people I know intent on buying all the latest stuff are people into steamer culture, aka trying to be a streamer or interact with them and follow their trends.
its half assed, like a something switch console game of nintendo has been doing since 2020, which turned me away from the console altogether, i stuck to pc , but not high end games. my bro bought a brand new switch when they were selling new variations but he has barely played since.
for barely 40 USD of content
This is completely relative, and different for everyone... But I have a hard time backing up statements like this given that it costs nearly $20 to go to the movie theater and watch a 90 minute movie. If I can get like 40-150 hours from a $70 game... That's really not that bad in terms of value. In my opinion.
I think we have been a little bit spoiled (that isn't to say that video game publishers aren't greedy corporations that over charge to increase their profit margins, of course they do and fuck them for it).
But you can get hundreds of hours from a f2p game, so that's the competition $70 games have. Then there's older triple a titles that are cheaper, and there's so many that it's not possible to have played all of them. Then epic giveaways, game bundles, indies, etc.
And price increases push more consumers away from impulse purchases. And that can lead to them becoming patient gamers once they see not buying at release isn't a big deal.
Nope. All video games are bad, overpriced etc. same with movies as tv shows.
And we all have the right to the creative work of others. So pirate everything. That’ll fix it! /s
The day of the backlog has come! Portable PC enjoyers rejoice!
Make a timeline comparing the rising cost of games, rising unemployment, addition of tariffs on exports from Japan and this. Notice a pattern?
Tariffs would likely have very tiny influence on this statistic since most video game spending nowadays is digital, and digital products are protected from tariffs since tariffs are only attached to physical goods.
Its funny that people had more time at home and remote work and the games industry had a massive boost. Now people can barely afford to eat, need to commute hours every day, have the looming threat of being thrown in a concentration camp and maybe even a civil war on the horizon. Why aren't people buying $100 games???
I don’t need the 7th iteration of the same game dressed up with new graphics for the price they're charging.
Depression has me not so interested in playing games anymore. Reading instead. Gaming is losing its magic for me. I’m 36.
It's fun how when you could really most use a reliable distraction you start to not be able to find joy in things you used to.
That's when you play PvP games that piss you off so much sadness goes to anger, which can be a nice distraction.
Idk I only spent $25 this steam summer sale on 3 games, I think it was ok
Mayhaps the former young Americans are now aging into, uh… being not young Americans? Mayhaps said former young Americans also don’t have children because this entire county’s culture is all about feeding all the money to 1%ers yacht purchases?
I honestly don’t trust any “adult” who’s my age that doesn’t play viddy games, like what are you into for entertainment? A lamp?
the people around 25-35 that dont play vidya are either into extreme sports outside all the time (adrenaline junkie) or are fat fucks who watch every show on the planet with 100 bucks a month in subscriptions (sedated paypig)
oh and the other option is exhausted parents whose only wish would be uninterrupted sleep
I work a hard job then doomscroll Lemmy and YouTube when I'm not working in my shop.
Show me the Lämp, brother
Wing noises intensify.
I honestly don’t trust any “adult” who’s my age that doesn’t play viddy games,
This is like the modern version of, "Don't trust anyone over 30"
Single data point: my young, working, well off gaming part of my family is just out of energy. It's easier to watch a YouTube video instead of TV or gaming, before then falling asleep to wake up for work. Seems like much of their circle is similar.
As for myself, I'm going through a, uh, icky phase of life and am not really motivated to play unless it's coop.
...Maybe others are struggling similarly?
Also, the games we do look at tend to be from indie to mid-size studios, with BG3 and KCD2 being the only recent exceptions.
BG3 is still from a mid-size studio, Larian is not AAA, they are AA. They are just really fucking good at what they do and are able to pump out AAA quality cause they focus on their strengths, which is making CRPGs, instead of trying to chase trends.
This is why work/life balance is so important. I wouldn't ever call myself "well-off" but I don't have kids and my job allows me ample time off to play games and watch movies and shit. It's kind of awesome.
I get paid less than I could be, but I don't care about that since it means I don't need to work 70 hours a week and spend the rest of my time sleeping.
This is why work/life balance is so important. I wouldn’t ever call myself “well-off” but I don’t have kids and my job allows me ample time off to play games and watch movies and shit.
Neither do they! They aren't workaholics, they're home bodies that work the least they can!
It's just that the workplaces are shit. One went back to mandated RTO for no reason even though much of the work is overseas at odd hours. The company's literally trying to make employees miserable so they quit without severence. The other is work-from-home, but with enough pointless meetings and complete workplace dysfunction to eat energy.
And these seem like well above average jobs.
I'm not young or American, but I can tell gaming has been changing. I can't even remember what was the last "AAA" game I bought, because it must have been a couple of years ago.
Most games I buy are 40€ connoisseur titles or 20€ indie games. I don't hear about any "must-play" AAA titles through the grapevine these days. I do hear about interesting indie stuff all the time, though. Most of the 60€+ games I hear about are kind of niche stuff.
Any AAA game I got in the last decade I waited till it was dirt cheap. Red Dead 2 was the last one I bought and played through was maybe 15-20 bucks or something?
Can’t wait till the indie wave wakes up the realization that there is a goldmine of 90s games that were incredible. Star control 2 for one could probably be mistaken for a new indie hit nowadays.
I've been playing X-Wing. The mad lads who built XWVM have essentially modernized the game and got it working on and with modern hardware, while strictly preserving its feel. It's amazing.
A new Star Control is coming up, made by the OG developers. I am very much looking forward to it.
Nice! Wish listing now!
i think the impact of all the free games shows too
i removed a bunch of shit from my wishlist because it was free on epic amazon or gog at some point. my heroic games launcher library keeps growing and i dont see the point of buying games when i have this huge backlog of things i actually want to play. notable exceptions to the no buy are extreme high quality outliers like baldurs gate and cyberpunk(dlc) and niche indie games i want to support. those i buy on steam (or gog)
at the same time i hope i only cost epic and amazon money
Yep, I know a lot of people who would balk at buying games but have no qualms dropping more than 100$ per month on gacha games.
We desperately need to ban all forms of real money gambling in games, or at least prevent kids from accessing it.
Ok but doesn’t every tracking company pretend they don’t track kids’ habits? The whole industry is built on fraud.
This should be the real story
I said in another thread but I've been unemployed for a while now. Even jobs I'm referred to my old coworkers aren't giving me interviews. If capital wants me to spend money, they have to pay me money first. Until then, fuck them.
how much money do young americans have to blow on video games? people are struggling. is it really surprising that, as disposable income vanishes, so does recreation spending?
I rarely buy new AAA games. Mostly indie titles and heavily-discounted AAA games.
I guess it's the over 25s buying all those Switch 2s then?
youtubers and twitch streamers who spent the past 6 months complaining about how games shouldn't be that expensive
Even then I knew they were all still going to buy them.
Maybe it's because all the good games are indie games that cost a fraction of the batshit insane prices these shady corpo outfits are pushing?
Young Americans can already barely pay for food and rent let alone luxuries like entertainment
For me, its the long term viability of older games vs new ones. I can play older games on their original console or pc and they don't have always onoine functions that break the game when the server shuts down. Hell, I am having a great time re-playing nfsu2 on my og xbox. I don't find it any less fun than most wanted or some of the newer ones when I only have 30 minutes to play.
Survivorship of older games is a really good indicator that they’ll continue to be available in the future. Like you said, too many modern games are online only and turn to expensive nothingness when the servers are shut down.
Because they feel frustrated that they cant keep playing the games they paid with their hard-earned cash due to publishers destroying them.
Can't afford a home, holiday and now videogames.
Maybe they can ask their AI to inspect the size of everyone's nose? Maybe that's the trick to get us to buy more AI chips in our games and TVs and phones and cars and in our fruit probably. There's gotta be AI in our food somewhere.
We are ripe for another Luddite movement with this giant AI grift the Tech Bros are forcing on us.
Games are 70 and 80 dollars now. Young people can't afford them. I can't either, but I would refuse to pay that price regardless, anyway.
I'm not young, but I know mine has gone down. I'm not playing less games, though. 🏴☠️
In addition to other's comments, I think that we just have enough good games by now that a lot of people can find a game they enjoy enough to sink hundreds or thousands of hours into. Minecraft, Factorio, Satisfactory, Hollow Knight, Elden Ring, etc.
Back in the early 90s I would walk into a store, buy a game that came in a box with a manual, take it home and it was mine.
I bought the 1st Civilization like this. I still have it. No Internet needed.
That's the way it should be. All the online, dlc, mini boxes, group play, create online accounts.....fuck all that shit.
I echo this a developer with a top app on the Meta Quest. My USA sales have fallen off a cliff, while other regions like Asia and Europe have increased a little.
Maybe their parents have less money. Guess who's fault is it ?
Wall Street Journal that wrote original article have it in their name.
That's because most of them are playing F2P video games on their mobile devices.
That include fortnite skins?
how big is fortnite still, i feel like it has it wow phase, 2016ish and it kinda dropped off.
The popularity has dipped, but they still have 1,500,000 players per day average and make about $9,000,000 per day. Over 14,000,000 players were on towards the end of last year when they did a juiceworld tribute event.
Or roblox money. They seem to be doing fine
*i .