The industry's core assumption — that players pay, studios profit — is cracking from every direction at once.
Gaming
China can now build $1 billion blockbuster games for $70 million. Black Myth proved it. FASTMaster sees $4.9 billion of Western game revenue a year now open to Chinese rivals — and the market hasn't priced it.
Gaming
The biggest online games are graying. League of Legends lost 55 million monthly players; Fortnite's US-teen reach fell to 37 percent. The original fans are aging out, and new ones cost 30 percent more to win.
Gaming
Half of Roblox's developers earned $1,575 last year. The top ten averaged $33.9 million. The platform keeps 70% of every dollar — and builders now have somewhere else to go.
Gaming
Microsoft says Game Pass earns $5 billion a year, but has never shown a standalone profit — and the costs it leaves out could be enormous. Our model puts $668 million a year at risk if the real numbers surface.
Gaming
Top games now cost $300M-plus to build while the price stays at $70. Only five franchises can earn that back, leaving $7.7bn of yearly revenue at risk. The market calls it a dip — our index says it's permanent.
Gaming
Big publishers are destroying an estimated $4.7 billion a year launching online games that mostly flop — a money pit the market still mistakes for a run of bad luck.
Gaming
AI buyers outbid gamers for every chip. NVIDIA cut gaming card output 40%, memory is up 172%, the PlayStation 5 jumped $100 — a $9.4bn yearly hit to gaming hardware that won't fix itself.
Gaming
New York is suing Valve, eight states are suing Roblox, and regulators already fined a prize-box maker. The billions games earn from random loot and item-betting just stopped being safe money.
Gaming
AI voices cost over ninety percent less, and ninety percent of studios already use AI. About $1.8 billion in yearly game voice and motion-capture pay is draining away — and the cheapest work goes first.
Gaming
Steam's record sales hide a brutal squeeze: the typical game now earns $249, the top 1% of titles take 90% of indie revenue, and barely 0.5% of 2024 releases are viable businesses.