They believe that premium games (i.e. not free titles) don’t really need additional monetization, but this is probably laughed at by publishers because they are the ones pushing for it (suffice it to say, Electronic Arts and Ultimate Team).

Publishers are very hungry for money. An example of this is Star Wars Outlaws. Massive Entertainment’s game hasn’t even been released yet, but Ubisoft’s post-launch plan is already up to its neck in microtransactions. We’re talking about a full-priced game here. Meanwhile, 89% of the 300 developers surveyed at Devcom 2024 disagree: they think microtransactions have no place in premium games because they can be successful without them or with a buy-to-play model.

But it is now much rarer to see a paid game without additional monetization. 65% of respondents believe in a premium business model for both physical and digital games. 81% say that cross-platform multiplayer is necessary for success. One respondent said that the best business model is free-to-play, peppered with advertising. (He must have been a mobile developer!) 31% want to use AI minimally, while 21% want to use AI for coding and production to make work easier. 18% would use it for marketing and communication (!?)…

Developers were also asked about the challenges facing the games industry. 55% believe that market saturation is the biggest problem, while 45% believe that development costs are the biggest headache. Both issues are common in the industry: the former is logical for genre saturation. This will be the case for Concord, for example, which is trying to succeed as a premium title in a genre dominated by mostly free-to-play games. As for layoffs, 57% think they will continue at the same pace (or faster) over the next 12 months, while 43% think they will slow down and improve.

So the mood is not very optimistic, and we should not expect the situation to improve in the short term (there will be more talk of another round of layoffs in today’s news…).

Source: WCCFTech, Venturebeat