7 Reasons Why People Are Giving Up On Gaming

7. All Your Favourite Studios Have Shut Down Or Are Falling Apart

It wasn't until we put out this video analysing the financials of the industry and looking to dissect the current "malaise" that's permeating gaming in 2022, that many comments began mentioning the fact that a LOT of the studios we used to champion, love and follow, simply aren't around anymore, or are different beasts entirely.

Across the board, start with AAA and Ubisoft, Bethesda, Blizzard, Square Enix, Bioware and EA seem allergic to focusing on quality and/or originality over monetisation and formulaic releases, with the likes of Konami largely sitting the last decade out, following the debacle surrounding Silent Hills and Metal Gear Solid V.

Rockstar couldn't even get the GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition out the door without it being an abysmal, insulting mess of a product, and CD Projekt RED, for as much as The Witcher 3 near-singlehandedly revived interest in the gaming scene across 2015, have now lost 75% of their company worth following Cyberpunk 2077's disastrous launch.

Smaller beloved teams like Raven, Pandemic and Visceral have either been shuttered by their publishers, or folded into working on larger entities like Call of Duty, almost entirely removing, Jenga-style, the "mid-tier" of development that entertained millions of us.

The latter has increasingly been replaced by indie titles, which is thankfully the modern-day equivalent of that "game first, profit second" ethos people like me miss so dearly. Impressive "AA" titles like Evil West, Sifu, Shadow Warrior 3, Hellblade, A Plague Tale etc. are incredibly promising and restorative in their balance of solid game mechanics vs monetisation, yet we've a long way to go when it comes to the industry's upper echelon feeling healthy once again.