By Gavin Boyle
As even more players flood into the video game market, developers are starting to prioritize player retention over the amount of players their games actually touch.
“The key is whether users stick around and if they continue to play the game you built and whether they’re willing to pay as well, that goes into another bigger question,” Phylicia Koh of investment company Play Ventures told Fox News.
This shift in priorities could transform the industry for the better or for the worst.
Related: Roblox Faces Class Action Lawsuit for Enabling Underage Gambling on Site
One direction developers could take would be to make addictive games that hook their players to achieve high player retention. This would lead to more games featuring gambling and other addictive elements. The other strategy would be for developers to focus on creating higher quality games that players find worthy of their attention. It remains to be seen which option will win as companies are using both strategies.
Many of the largest games platforms, such as Roblox or Fortnite, have taken the addictive route, regularly bombarding their users, who are often young, with systems that compel them to return day after day. Despite being free to play, they also tend to extract as much money as possible from gamers through predatory means.
In 2022, Fortnite was fined $520 million for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act for tricking millions of young players into unintentional purchases.
“Fortnite’s counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration led players to incur unwanted charges based on the press of a single button,” the FTC noted during its decision. “For example, players could be charged while attempting to wake the game from sleep mode, while the game was in a loading screen, or by pressing an adjacent button while attempting simply to preview an item. These tactics led to hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized charges for consumers.”
Players, however, recognize the value of high quality games and continue to reward them with their dollar. At this year’s Game Awards, the industry’s annual award show, the game to take home the top prize was “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33,” an extremely polished game made by first-time developers.
Further highlighting the desire for high-quality games, “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” was eventually stripped of the title when it was revealed that AI was used during the development process, even though none of the work done by AI ended up in the final product. This case highlights how gamers want their games to be made with heart and soul, rather than mass developed using AI.
The gaming industry will inevitably continue to evolve in the future as it remains the pastime for hundreds of millions around the world. Only time will tell, however, whether it changes for the better or worse. 2026 could serve as a major shift in either direction.
Read Next: How Gambling Took Over the Gaming Industry
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