Microtransactions are a hot topic in the gaming industry, especially as they become increasingly frequent. Even in ” completed games,” microtransactions are finding a way to worm themselves into the game. For example, look at Star Wars Outlaws, an upcoming game made by Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft. The game isn’t even out yet, and they already have a roadmap for microtransactions planned.
However, 90% of developers who participated in a survey at Devcom 2024 said that premium games don’t need microtransactions. While the general audience already knows this, game companies still incorporate them into premium games.
89% of developers surveyed at Devcom 2024 said they believe premium games can be “financially successful just by being Buy-to-Play.” It seems that premium games released without microtransactions are becoming rarer each day.
Regarding business models, 65% of people believe in a premium game’s business model for physical and digital edition games. Additionally, 81% of survey participants believe that cross-platform play is essential for a premium game to be successful. Surprisingly, one person believed that free-to-play with ads was the best business model in gaming. While this may be true for mobile gaming, it’d be hard to imagine games like Elden Ring or Call of Duty being free-to-play with ads. Even in mobile gaming, plenty of people refuse to play games if there are ads or will spend a small amount of money to eliminate ads.
Looking at other insights from the Devcom survey, 31% prefer minimal AI usage in their work, with 21% wanting to leverage AI for code and production to make the development job simpler. 18% would like to use AI for marketing and communication. Considering how rapidly AI is expanding and evolving, it’ll be interesting to see the results of next year’s AI usage.
Regarding challenges that the games industry faces, 55% believe that the biggest issue is market saturation, with 46% saying the biggest issue is development costs. Both are significant issues in the games industry, with genres becoming more saturated with each new game. For example, the Soulslike genre exploded, and there are more games than ever to choose from in that genre compared to last year.
Finally, when asked about layoffs within the games industry, 57% of speakers anticipated that layoffs would continue at the same pace or faster over the next 12 months, with 43% believing that the layoffs would decrease and more jobs would open up in the industry for people.
The games industry is rapidly changing and evolving—not necessarily for good, either. However, it’ll be interesting to compare the results of this Devcom 2024 survey to next year’s.
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