Steam just forced the game industry to hit the reset button

Summary

The gaming industry is facing significant challenges, including delays in major games like Grand Theft Auto 6, massive layoffs, and declining revenue. With rising production costs and a push towards aggressive monetization strategies, the industry's future seems bleak. However, Steam continues to thrive with its consumer-friendly policies and rejection of intrusive advertisements. As the industry grapples with its issues, Steam remains a steadfast beacon of hope, pushing back against predatory practices and promoting indie developers.

Highlights

• Steam is thriving amidst the gaming industry's crisis by rejecting predatory advertising models 💼.
• Grand Theft Auto 6's delay to 2026 creates uncertainty as the industry hoped it would be a financial savior 📅.
• The industry is on the brink due to layoffs, declining revenue, and aggressive monetization strategies 😟.
• Steam continues to empower indie developers, providing a platform for smaller games to succeed 🎮.
• Rising game prices and aggressive monetization are backfiring, driving players away and worsening industry woes 🚀.
• Despite industry challenges, Steam keeps growing, maintaining its dominance in PC gaming like a boss 🏆.

Key Takeaways

• The gaming industry is currently facing a crisis, characterized by layoffs, game delays, and financial troubles 🤯.
• Steam's consumer-friendly approach and rejection of in-game advertisements have allowed it to thrive amidst industry turmoil 💪.
• The delay of Grand Theft Auto 6 poses significant challenges to the industry, which hoped it would rejuvenate the market ⏳.
• Steam's support for indie developers and refusal to adopt aggressive monetization tactics sets it apart as a leader in the industry 🌟.
• Increased game prices and monetization strategies are alienating players, causing financial strain in the industry 💰.
• Despite industry challenges, Steam remains a dominant force in PC gaming, maintaining a significant market share 📈.

Overview

The gaming industry is in turmoil with rising production costs, aggressive monetization tactics, and high-profile game delays like Grand Theft Auto 6 to 2026. This has resulted in massive layoffs and financial struggles across the board. Companies are desperately seeking ways to turn things around, leading to controversial decisions such as introducing ads in games. This situation reveals the fragility of the industry and underscores the pressing need for a reset.

In contrast, Steam emerges as a stable force, continuing to thrive even as others falter. With consumer-friendly policies, such as rejecting disruptive ads and supporting indie developers, Steam supports an open market where smaller games can shine. This attitude has maintained its position as a cornerstone of PC gaming, holding a substantial market share while others falter. The brand's focus on player trust and experience continues to pay dividends.

Amidst this uncertain landscape, there is potential for smaller developers to gain more traction. With the Nintendo Switch 2 on the horizon and other title delays, opportunities arise for games otherwise overshadowed by big releases. Steam's model and influence demonstrate there are alternative paths to success beyond the mainstream industry's current trajectory, suggesting a brighter future could be possible by embracing innovation and consumer respect.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: The industry's struggle The current state of the game industry is concerning, with numerous challenges negatively impacting publishers, development studios, and gaming journalist websites. Widespread layoffs are occurring throughout the industry. Key issues include the delay of Grand Theft Auto 6, raising concerns, and Steam's actions to prevent predatory behavior. These events highlight the industry's desperate attempts to recover, hinting at the need for a significant reset.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Steam's advantage The chapter, 'Steam's Advantage,' discusses the strategic positioning of Steam as a leading digital game storefront. The discussion highlights that while other companies may adopt predatory strategies potentially sacrificing player goodwill, Steam thrives without needing to do so. Steam's model allows it to remain successful by taking a commission from every game sold worldwide, ensuring consistent revenue without heavy expenditure. This business approach has led to immense wealth for its founder, Gabe Newell.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Grand Theft Auto 6 delay impact The chapter discusses the delay of Grand Theft Auto 6, which is now expected to be released in 2026 according to Rockstar's announcement on Twitter. Rockstar expressed gratitude for the interest and excitement around the new game despite the delay and assured fans that they are working hard to meet or exceed expectations. The story is related to challenges on the Steam platform, although specifics are not detailed in the provided transcript.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Predatory advertising in games The video game industry is facing challenges as many games and publishers are not performing well. GTA 6's expected release could have been a positive turning point to rejuvenate the struggling industry, despite its potential to overshadow other game releases. Ubisoft serves as an example, having had to allow a Chinese company, Tencent, to take a controlling stake. This chapter explores the broader implications and concerns of predatory advertising practices in the gaming world.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Steam's stance against in-game ads The chapter discusses Steam's unique position in the gaming industry, emphasizing its resilience and dominance. Despite the industry facing challenges and other companies struggling with financial issues, Steam maintains its presence and influence without engaging in practices like in-game advertising. The narrative positions Steam as an indispensable platform akin to Oxygen, unaffected by market fluctuations or the success or failure of individual game releases.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Monetization madness in gaming This chapter discusses the dynamics within the gaming industry, focusing on Valve Corporation's dominance with their online storefront, Steam. Despite attempts by companies like Epic Games to compete with their own platforms, Steam maintains a stronghold in the market, largely due to its established presence and the passive yet impactful leadership of Gabe Newell. The chapter highlights Steam's role as a major platform where most game developers sell their games, with notable exceptions like Nintendo opting out. Additionally, it mentions Valve's unique position as a privately-owned entity in an industry where such ownership is less common.
• 03:00 - 03:30: CSGO's lucrative cosmetics market This chapter explores the dynamics of the lucrative cosmetics market in the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO). It discusses how companies like Valve, the creators of CSGO, operate with minimal oversight because they are not publicly traded, allowing them greater freedom in their decision-making processes. The chapter also touches upon the broader gaming industry's current struggles, comparing it to a patient on life support, and highlights the anticipation surrounding the release of Grand Theft Auto 6 (GTA 6) as a potential catalyst for revitalizing the industry.
• 03:30 - 04:00: Industry's reliance on GTA 6 The chapter discusses the emerging trend in the gaming industry to incorporate advertisements directly into video games. This approach resembles traditional advertising methods like billboards or bus stops, but within the gaming context. While the gaming industry is pushing this concept, platforms like Steam stand against it. The chapter highlights concerns about this practice, focusing on how these paid commercials in paid video games could affect the gaming experience.
• 04:00 - 04:30: The cost of gaming in 2025 The chapter discusses the ongoing issue and future implications of personalized advertisements in video games. It highlights a Microsoft patent from 2022 that describes placing in-game ads tailored to players' interests. This chapter explores how this concept has been pushed by companies and its potential integration in games by 2025.
• 04:30 - 05:00: The need for industry reset The chapter begins with an expression of distaste for current practices in the gaming industry. It uses examples such as Fortnite and Call of Duty to illustrate the frustration of being forced to watch advertisements between matches instead of engaging with the game, like customizing loadouts. The chapter criticizes the idea of interrupting gameplay with mandatory ads, using hypothetical scenarios to underline its negative impact on player experience. The narrative strongly supports opting out of games that incorporate such intrusive advertising models, advocating for a necessary reset in the industry to prioritize player enjoyment over advertising revenues.
• 05:00 - 05:30: Conclusion: The future of gaming The conclusion chapter of the text discusses the future of gaming, emphasizing the introduction of in-game advertisements as a controversial solution to current industry challenges such as layoffs and decreased revenue. The text critiques this approach, arguing that while it might benefit publishers financially, it would result in a poor experience for players. The text provides an example involving Microsoft potentially using a soccer game to implement this strategy.

Steam just forced the game industry to hit the reset button Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 To say that the game industry right now is in a bad place would be an understatement. Everything that could have gone wrong for the industry in the long run has kind of happened to the dismay of the publishers who run everything. And a lot of studios right now are suffering. There's layoffs across the industry from both development studios and gaming journalist websites too. And from Grand Theft Auto 6 being delayed causing concerns and Steam blocking the industry from its own predatory behavior, it's clear that this industry is willing to do anything that it can to save itself. and it might just need a reset instead.
• 00:30 - 01:00 But even if then these companies believe the way forward should be more predatorial and that means they're willing to sacrifice the goodwill of the players to save themselves in the process. Look, Steam is doing great. It kind of always will be cuz it's not really a platform that needs to spend absurd amounts of money to keep itself going. Being a digital storefront, they take a slice of every sale of every game sold to players worldwide. It's a genius tactic. Gabe Newell and his buddies have become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams because of it, too. But outside
• 01:00 - 01:30 of Steam, things aren't looking as great. Let's start with Grand Theft Auto 6 here, cuz this story will directly tie into what I want to talk about with Steam. You'll see what I mean. So, as you probably already know, Grand Theft Auto 6 got delayed till 2026. Rockstar said this via Twitter. We are very sorry that this is later than you expected. The interest and excitement surrounding a new GTA has been truly humbling for our entire team. We want to thank you for your support and your patience as we work to finish the game with every game we have released. The goal has always been to try and exceed your expectations and blah blah blah. You'll see more
• 01:30 - 02:00 information soon. So, this is great news if you're a publisher who has a big game coming out this year cuz GTA 6 was likely going to cannibalize your sales if it released near your game. However, for the industry as a whole, this is a bad thing because the hope with GTA 6 anyways, was that it was going to be the shot in the arm, so to speak, to revitalize the dying games industry. We all know it. A lot of games aren't doing well. Neither are their publishers. Ubisoft is an obvious one, of course. They had to let China based 10 cent own
• 02:00 - 02:30 a large portion of them just to save themselves from utter bankruptcy. And I could go on with more examples, but you kind of get the point. The industry is just, you know, kind of in flames right now. Well, everyone except Steam pretty much cuz like I said, the age-old meme of Steam doing nothing in the face of opposition and still winning the fight regardless, it just keeps coming true time and again because whether GTA 6 was coming out or not or whichever game does well or bombs, Steam is just like Oxygen. It will just exist and people will need the platform no matter what
• 02:30 - 03:00 happens. And Epic did try to combat Steam with their own storefront. And it hasn't really worked for the most part for them either. Cuz Gabe Newell, who looks more like Santa Claus every single day, just keeps winning every single battle he gets tossed into by just sitting there and looking like he doesn't care. And well, he kind of doesn't. Steam is the great equalizer of the gaming industry. Everyone sells their games there, unless you're Nintendo, of course. But another thing that Steam and Valve is is that they are privately owned, which isn't as common in the games industry either. Valve is
• 03:00 - 03:30 able to choose what they want with their platform with very little oversight because they don't need to answer to thousands of investors all giving their opinions, which is the opposite for other companies that are of course public and anyone can invest into. But the industry as a whole right now, let's say it how it is guys, it's on life support and they were praying that GTA 6 was going to be the defibrillator that would, you know, shock the gaming industry back to life. It's the saying that all tides raise all ships or something. Yeah, like that. But since GTA 6 is now not going to save the
• 03:30 - 04:00 industry for the foreseeable future anymore, this has brought up another issue that has been quietly getting worse across the board and Steam is one of the only places that is completely against this new meta that the industry is still trying to push. So, we all know what advertisements are. They play everywhere and you see them on billboards or even bus stops. Well, the gaming industry kind of wants to bring advertisements into video games themselves, not as some digital bus stop in your favorite game, mind you. No, they want to actually put paid commercials in your paid video games and
• 04:00 - 04:30 then force you to watch them. And Steam is well, let's get into it. This problem has been going on for a long time and companies have been attempting to push this concept into the video games for quite a while now. Here's an article from 2022 even titled Microsoft patent discusses personalized advertisement in games. The patent Microsoft has been trying to push for a while now is to place in-game ads in your favorite video games based on your interest as a player. Here's a photo on screen of this padded concept as it would work within a computer. The concept of such a thing
• 04:30 - 05:00 existing makes me recoil in disgust if I'm being honest. Cuz the idea of playing a game, say Fortnite or Call of Duty even, and in between matches instead of being able to fix your loadouts, you instead are forced to put your controller down and watch an ad in game would be insane to me to witness. Imagine in between matches in Black Ops 6 and you have to watch that Nike ad or the car ad to completion or you can't play your next match. And if you click out of the ad early, you can play until another ad is played. I would opt out of that game immediately. And if you ask
• 05:00 - 05:30 me, ads have no place to be so egregious like this in video games at all. But considering the industry is facing a, you know, real crisis of layoffs and massive dips in revenue, this to them would be a solution to generate more revenue per copy of each game sold to players. Would it be pro publisher for them? Absolutely. Would it suck and be awful and create a terrible experience for you as the player? Absolutely. Another example in this pattern shows how Microsoft would be using a soccer game as an example. As shown here, they
• 05:30 - 06:00 would place ads in the background around the stadium of the match that you're playing with that the ads are targeted to you. And this would then be even more personalized since Microsoft could hear you when you play via your mic. Or if you have a Microsoft phone, even better, cuz then it's attached to your account. Now that massage that you've been putting off suddenly appears in the background of the game you're playing, telling you, "Hey, you should get a massage soon." I personally hate all of this and really think the only thing stopping companies from doing this sort of thing are pretty much other companies just not being as terrible in response.
• 06:00 - 06:30 And then there's Steam, of course, whether you like them or not. They are one such company that greatly opposes this sort of future. If you actually go look at their guidelines for advertisements, it's very proconsumer. Well, mostly very plainly stated here. As you can see, Steam does not contain any paid advertising, nor are advertising models supported in games distributed on Steam. There are varying interpretations for what constituents advertising in a game. So, the examples below are meant to help guide developers as to what is and is not supported on Steam. One of these examples is being
• 06:30 - 07:00 okay is product placement. As Steam states here, games may contain real brands, products, personalities, etc. as part of gameplay, provided such portrayals are not disruptive and are appropriate within the context of the game. For example, a racing game might feature real life sponsor logos on its race cars, or a skateboard game might include characters wearing real world brands. Note that all developers must obtain the relevant permission and/or licenses for any copyrighted content contained in their games. Okay, fair enough. Another example of okay ads is cross promotions, which also reads,
• 07:00 - 07:30 "Developers can run many different kinds of cross-promotional activities on Steam, such as bundles, sales events, and more. Promotions may involve other Steam products or products brands outside of Steam. These types of promotions are encouraged and many customers find value in them. However, under no circumstances is it okay to charge other developers to participate in a bundle or to sell access to a sale page or other page on Steam. But here's where Valve really puts their foot down and says this is not what is allowed on their platform. Which then reads, "Developers should not utilize paid
• 07:30 - 08:00 advertising as a business model in their game. such as requiring players to watch or otherwise engage with advertising in order to play or gauging gameplay behind advertising. If your game's business model relies on advertising on other platforms, you will need to remove those elements before shipping on Steam. Developers should not use advertising as a way to provide value to players, such as giving players a reward for watching or engaging with advertising in their game. So this means the very same
• 08:00 - 08:30 predatory patent that Microsoft has been trying to implement for 3 years now is the exact sort of thing that Steam is vehemingly against officially even to this day. And that's a good thing because without these regulations, the industry would become a hellscape overnight. Let's be real. But Steam's not ad free themselves. They're just smart about how they go about it, too. Their ads are disguised as game trailers or community hubs or those new release carousels that make you impulse buy a $60 game featuring a woman with boobs the size of melons. It's genius. Sure.
• 08:30 - 09:00 And well, here's the kicker. Steam's approach keeps third-p partyy ads like those sketchy mobile game pop-ups at bay still. So, thanks to how they run things, there's no raid shadow legend jump scares while you're browsing for Elden Ring DLC or whatever else. And Val's philosophy has also been about user trust first. They avoid intrusive ads because they know players would riot if they had to watch a car ad before driving a car in their car game. And Steam's ad blocking game is a lifeline in an industry that is drowning in
• 09:00 - 09:30 monetization madness. Like, it's ridiculous at this point. You got mobile games that are basically slot machines with waifu skins at this point. And even AAA games are nickel and dimeming us with battle passes and $20 horse armor. Steam's restraint is why it's still the king of PC gaming and why it has to this day around a 70% market share of the overall PC game market, which yeah, that's insane and that's a lot of money. I know. Meanwhile, Epic Game Store is over there throwing Fortnite skins at players and giving games for free. And
• 09:30 - 10:00 even despite their best efforts, Steam, like those memes, keep saying, they do literally nothing and they keep winning anyways. But this is why I wanted to bring this up all amidst the GTA 6 delay and the industry, you know, falling apart, which is that with desperation comes insane business ideas to turn that tide around. To put it simply, Steam is to a degree forcing the industry to hit a reset button of sorts. Because while these publishers drown in their gross overmonetization and, you know, self-destructive practices, the usual lessons you would think these types
• 10:00 - 10:30 would learn would be to not keep doing these things in the future. But like we know, most executives in games don't really play games. They don't see them for art or enjoyment. All they really see them for are excuses to make more money by any means possible. And when your games are failing, like for example, Respawn Entertainment recently laying off around 100 people, as seen here, where it's confirmed that Respawn has been forced by Electronic Arts, who owns them, to lay people off, cancel two incubation projects, one of which was a Titanfall extraction shooter. Again, I
• 10:30 - 11:00 don't understand this obsession with extraction shooters. Marathon is already proving that game concept is not really resonating with players at all. But anyways, I'll spare you the usual corporate quotes where they say stuff like, "Oh, this was such a hard decision for us." And then you wonder why they had to do this. When they've also grossly overmonetized their games like Apex Legends to the point of literal parody and it's not even something new, as seen here from Game Rant, Apex had an axe in game that was behind some ridiculous Iron Crown limited time event where players had to pay something like $7 American a loot box to obtain this
• 11:00 - 11:30 axe. and someone calculated you'd have to spend about $170 to ensure that you would get that axe. How egregious is that? Almost $200 American for digital axe. Of course, I know people will bring up Steam having their own form of gotcha, if you will, with, you know, CS:GO. So, despite Valve being adamant in protecting players from ads and games, they too have been met with scorn for absolutely also nickel and dimming players for their own digital items as well. Counterstrike, as seen in this article from literally just last month, reports that Valve made over $100
• 11:30 - 12:00 million in cosmetics from CS:GO alone. The article details that in March 2025, about 32 million loot boxes were opened by players in CSGO. Each box retailing for roughly $249 American, and Valve takes a 15% cut from each of these loot boxes. The article then further details that in keys alone, those 32 million loot boxes that Valve sold generated them about $82 million. And the rest of the revenue came from players buying cases and not even opening them themselves, but
• 12:00 - 12:30 instead selling them to other players. This same Dexerto article claims that based on the info they could find, roughly 2.065 065 billion cases have been opened in CSGO and they have generated somewhere near $5 billion in revenue for Valve, which is Yeah, I know that's insane, dude. So, I'm not trying to make Valve or I guess Steam to be seen as the absolute good guy because they have obviously done similar practices to the very things that they are also protecting against. But in Valve's case, they don't need to cater
• 12:30 - 13:00 to what some website wants or what some other publisher needs. And being privately owned means they can do really whatever they want. And whether you like that or not, unfortunately, we can't do much about it either way. But while Valve sits on a pile of cash laughing, the rest of the industry is facing stuff like layoffs and studio closures. And enough microtransactions are being used to hit us like a triple combo and goddamn Street Fighter pretty much. And in 2024 alone, over 10,000 game devs lost their jobs. Microsoft, Activision, Bungie, the list goes on. It's been a
• 13:00 - 13:30 bloodbath. Why is this happening? greed, mismanagement, and a market that's hooked on live service games that just keep crashing and burning. Remember Anthem, Marvel's Avengers, Concord, even? Yeah, those were supposed to be the future of gaming. Now, they're all digital gravestones. Publishers are chasing the Fortnite money while forgetting how to make a good single player game instead. And don't get me started on $70 price tags for halfbaked launches or this new meta where companies are now charging 80 or $90 American for new releases. A good reminder for those who still don't know,
• 13:30 - 14:00 Microsoft has confirmed they're following Nintendo and will match them with the prices of their games. As seen here from IGN that confirms this story, it's not just their games, too. Microsoft is raising prices on controllers, headsets, even their consoles are going to get more expensive, which is kind of crazy since the Xbox Series X and S have not really sold nearly enough to even warrant their own existence. And in their infinite wisdom, they're instead raising the prices even more. Great idea, Microsoft. I'm sure that'll work for you. And this is what this video is about. It's a lot
• 14:00 - 14:30 of things, I know, but the point is that the entire industry, let's be real, kind of needs a massive reset. And all of the nonsense is going on from the whole CSGO box is putting people probably into literal debt. And companies pushing advertisements in hopes of overmonetizing their breadandut experiences to make as much money off each player as humanly possible. And at the same time, studios either are closing or laying off people in droves because the executives at the top, they don't really care about the entire industry that is cratering pretty much around them. They don't care how many
• 14:30 - 15:00 bodies need to be thrown at these issues as long as the problems cease and get fixed. And realistically speaking, the industry is being put to a standard that, let's be honest, it can't reasonably reach anymore. Games are going to be too expensive now. Why the hell would I want to pay $120 Canadian for the next first party Microsoft title? No thanks. I'm good. Those price increases are not going to fix the industry, but if I had to guess, it will instead have the opposite effect, and it will just make people not buy games new at an even smaller rate than they already were doing. After all, look at
• 15:00 - 15:30 this article from April 2024, which detailed how over 60% of players weren't playing new titles in 2023. Most players are just playing Fortnite, CS:GO, Call of Duty, and very rarely are some games becoming breakout hits that shouldn't be but are anyways, like Clare Obscure Expedition 33, which has sold over a million copies and costed about $65 at launch Canadian. And in 2023 alone, about 66 games were responsible for roughly 80% of all play time across the entire gaming landscape, pretty much.
• 15:30 - 16:00 That's crazy. And that trend hasn't really changed much in 2025 because like I've shown you in this video, everything is just getting more expensive and the industry's executives who make the decisions are just not listening to what people want. By increasing the pricing of games or trying to force advertisements into what already exists, it's not really going to change anything. It will only make what's broken worse and cause the usual havens that don't need to do much to keep winning, like Steam, who just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And like I said, Steam is not without fault either in any of this. But if Gabe Newell
• 16:00 - 16:30 wasn't there to protect it, you'd be watching entire movie trailers, dude, before your next match of CS:GO or Fortnite or whatever else before you could play again. And I wouldn't be surprised if one day free-to-play games include a token system similar to an arcade. Pop in a dollar to play a round or two, then pop in another dollar to keep playing. Sounds ridiculous, sure, but based on what's being presented here, is that really out of the realm of possibility? I know Steam's not perfect, but it's a beacon of hope here regardless. Their refund policy, for
• 16:30 - 17:00 example, which allows you to get your money back as long as it's, you know, under the 2 hours of play time, which is no questions asked, is a middle finger to publishers who, you know, ship broken games constantly. And then there's their indie support. It's why games like Hollow Knight and Hades even exist. And without Steam, we would be stuck with EA's Origin or Ubisoft's Connect. And I'd rather eat a keyboard than use either of those willingly. But the fact the industry was banking on one game to save it all is kind of insane. The game that would raise the tides of the
• 17:00 - 17:30 industry and bring players back to accept this new forced expensive meta on consoles and PCs to then make their wallets cry in unison. That game, yeah, Grand Theft Auto 6, obviously. Oh, GTA 6, you beautiful elusive unicorn. This delay isn't just a bummer for fans. It's a seismic shock to the industry, cuz GTA 6 was supposed to be the 2025 savior. the game to rejuvenate the market according to what analysts like Matt Piscatella from Circana has said too. So
• 17:30 - 18:00 why is GTA 6 such a big deal? Because GTA 5, if you don't know, that sold $210 million copies and made about 8.6 billion. That's why. It's the diamond jewel of video games in their crown pretty much. And analysts are predicting that GTA 6 would sell like 40 million copies in one year alone, raking in about $3.2 billion. That's enough to buy a small country or at least a few NFTs before they tanked. But the real reason was that GTA 6 was meant to swoop in and revitalize this dying industry. But now
• 18:00 - 18:30 the industry's got a big black hole now in its 2025 schedule. Other studios were, you know, evading GTA 6's release like it was a dodgeball game. They were delaying their own titles just to avoid getting Steam rolled. And I mean, who can blame them? So, while Steam's out here keeping our storefront ad free and the industry is tripping over itself because Rockstar's perfectionism just removed their golden goose into the 2026 calendar year instead in PC gamers, they might not even see GTA 6 now until like
• 18:30 - 19:00 what 2027 maybe because Rockstar loves consoles first. I hate to say it, but they do. And they have always released on them before PC. Some people on Twitter think the delay is to do PC and console same day, which I mean maybe, but based on their track record, I don't think it'll be the case. However, if Rockstar was able to hit PC and consoles day one, yeah, we would be seeing the biggest launch in the history of gaming. And the industry needed that launch now rather than later when times are as dire as they've ever been. So while Steam
• 19:00 - 19:30 would fit into this mess as the lifeboat in a sinking industry, these other AAA publishers are now busy imploding while Steam's empowering indies and you know giving players options. Games like Bellatro or Manderlords and PAL World, those were Steam exclusives when they first released. Not anymore, but you get the idea. Are proof that you don't need a $200 million budget to make a banger that makes money. Steam's community reviews and their forums and their sales, they keep the power in the hands
• 19:30 - 20:00 of smaller developers, more so than some suit in a boardroom instead. But the industry is not doomed. Well, yet anyway. GTA 6's delay opens a window for smaller games to shine going forward, which is a good thing. Ghost of Yote on PS5 might do well. And then you got stuff like Marathon and Borderlands 4 stepping up to fill that void. Although, I guess we'll see about Marathon. But regardless, Steam's the platform that will just continue to grow because they kind of don't have to adhere to what the rest of the industry is doing or facing.
• 20:00 - 20:30 Plus, you also have the Nintendo Switch 2, which is going to drop soon. And this pretty much confirms that 2025 it will be the year of Nintendo pretty much now. So maybe Nintendo will be what raises the tide, so to speak, instead. But let's face it, Nintendo is not Steam and they do not budge when it comes to prices and they are responsible for this new meta mess that we're in too. So, if you ask me, the industry is in dire need of an industry reset. Maybe they can push it in time, and Steam is clearly the winner here, no matter what really happens. But from Grand Theft Auto 6
• 20:30 - 21:00 being delayed and companies imploding like a million exploding suns and Nintendo and now Microsoft 2 adopting this moronic, more expensive future, where does this leave the industry for you? Does it look bright to you, or is it darker than the void itself? Let me know in the comments. Thank you for watching. Subscribe and I'll see you in the next one.