It's a MASSIVE oversaturation of everything in the gaming industry. Plenty of people play games, but there are far too much product for the consumer to buy. Or, there's far too little of good products that generate any sort of money to the development teams. 99% of all game projects either die on the vine or don't make any money at launch.

The same logic goes for music, art, Hollywood, writing, books, pretty much any sort of creative role.

If you're still getting an education, don't go into the gaming industry. Don't be a musician. Don't be an artist. Don't be a writer. Don't be a Twitch streamer or YouTuber.

If you do it as a hobby, and it happens to work out, so be it. Or, if you're just doing it because you enjoy it in your spare time, that's fine, too. But, if it's your goal as the primary means to make money, don't be disappointed when it doesn't work out. You can't reliably work in oversaturated industries.

If you're trying to be a programmer and don't find a job in the gaming industry, go find some other development job that is in a more mundane industry. There's plenty of companies that better respect their employees than the fucking gaming industry.

Oh boo hoo, our crappy live-service battle pass ripoff game #7 wasn’t as successful as Fortnite. Now the investors want $6 Billion dollars back so guess it’s time to kill all the interns and use the life insurance money to pay dividends.

When suits enshit on the product

They all think they can use generative machine learning to move forward.... It will be an ugly few years

Far too many game studios came to view themselves as either a money printer or a political advocacy group first, and a game publisher only as a distant second, as a means to that end. Predictably, people have been losing interest in AAA gaming. Turns out that, whatever you want to say about the content of a game, creating a GOOD game that people genuinely enjoy playing is indeed an art, and a game planed and directed by a marketing research department has all the artistic appeal of a commercial.

The gaming industry is dying is an ice-cold take at this point, but I really don't see how it's sustainable in its current form with the way things are going right now. Sure, the analysts are saying things will course correct, but how is that supposed to happen if nothing in the industry changes? Games are just going to get more expensive to make and it feels like the cost-cutting is only going to get worse as more companies invest in AI tech.