An industry report claims that video games are losing the attention war to gambling, porn, and crypto:
A new report by Epyllion, a gaming industry advisory company headed by venture capitalist and market guru Matthew Ball, has broken down the state of the video game industry, and has published data indicating the medium is losing the war for people's attention to other ventures, including gambling, crypto, and pornography.
The report, a lengthy 164-page presentation which you can (and should) read yourself, dedicates a whole section called "Video Games are losing the attention war in the 'Major Market 8'" to the topic. It starts by comparing pre and post pandemic consumer spending from eight major video game markets - the USA, Japan, South Korea, UK, Germany, France, Canada, and Italy.
Prior to the pandemic, these countries made up over 60 percent of total spending on video games. Post-pandemic, almost all of these regions have seen a drop in gaming population. In the US, 2.5-4 points worth of players stopped playing video games, the Canadian Trade Association found in its latest report that roughly one-in-six players prior to the pandemic have stopped playing.
These decreases in participation have resulted, the report posits, in a drop in spending. In the US, PC and console spend is down eight percent since 2020 / 2021, which comes to roughly $2.3bn. Mobile gaming's US annual growth in terms of spending has largely flattened since 2025, but it's still above 12 percent compared to 2020, and now beats out console spend.
Total spend across all "Major Market 8" regions on console and PC shrunk by $4.8bn, and mobile is down by $2.3bn, all while five of these eight markets are at all-time highs in terms of total spend. This money is instead going elsewhere, to Roblox for example, which the report states makes up 67 percent of net growth.
[...]
During this 2025 period, AI apps that allowed for "role play, erotica, and art" have soared. The latest tracked statistic for installs for this software came to just under one billion worldwide.
Prediction markets, where users can bet on events that happen in the world, also had a recent boom in popularity. Users placed 1.5m bets a day during Q4 2025. Online Sports Betting is also taking potential users' money. In 2025, US net losses due to sports betting passed $17bn, a 35x increase from 2019 as these sorts of services become normalised, legalised, and integrated into sports in the USA. Despite bans in other countries, international net losses are around $53bn a year.
[...]
The report states: "Video Gaming's post-pandemic problem isn't that players choose to watch TikTok instead of buying a AAA game, or subscribe to Onlyfans instead of buying a PlayStation; it's that on a Friday evening, players are placing a growing share of their time and spend elsewhere."
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday February 24, @10:07AM (5 children)
Loot box porn games
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Funny) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 24, @11:44AM (2 children)
Rule 34 strongly suggests those already exist. Not that I've tried to test it.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Touché) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 24, @02:32PM (1 child)
Is there a prediction market where i can place a bet on this????????????????
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 24, @06:37PM
Never bet against Rule 34.
Your bookie will backdate the timestamps and create whatever you have bet against, in the unlikely event that 30 seconds of searching doesn't bring it up, 30 minutes of AI can make it.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday February 24, @12:02PM
There better be crypto in the loot boxes, that you can only use to buy more porn. PornCoins?
That said over all it seems a lot of the game market is crashing for other reasons. They seem to have catered hard to the "modern audience", whatever that is a the code-word for this month. But there have been a lot of AAA-titles last year they spectacularly imploded. They are not now so expensive to make as they try and cater to and be inclusive to everyone yet somehow manage to alienate the core gamer audience. If they don't sell gazillion of copies they are failures that take the development studies down with them. AAA are just to expensive, and well not very fun.
Unless I missed it the core gamer is still somehow the same. Yet they for whatever reason do not want to cater to them. They want to make games for others. That are not really into or buying their games. They want to capture an audience that can't or won't be captured. But they blow their entire budget on it and are then surprised when their game fails and goes out, and on sale, with a whimper.
For me personally Civilization 7 was a massive turd and I went back to playing Civilization 5 again as previously. Civilization 6 was really bad, but they somehow managed to make an even worse game. How? The game has a fairly set niche. It's a recipe to follow. Yet they feel the urge to "innovate" or whatever ... This year I'm so far only looking forward to one game -- Slay the Spire II. They better not fail. If they do, I guess I can play Slay the Spire with the Downfall mod forever.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday February 24, @02:38PM
Wasn't that essentially what StumbleUpon was?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday February 24, @02:53PM (1 child)
I wonder how they correct for "go woke go broke". Or they intentionally want to avoid doing so for obvious reasons LOL.
Dying organizations always go left. Which brings up another problem:
I would propose the gaming problem is a lack of creativity.
Theres infinite new(ish) pr0n, crypto and gambling. In gaming what is the new frontier that people actually like (as opposed to funded propaganda nobody likes or crazy corporate stuff no one plays)
Ya gotta buy minecraft from a long time ago if you've never played. Its dozens to thousands of hours of fun. Eventually even that runs out. Nothing new on the horizon?
Sort of like why virtually no one watches new TV and movies. None of it is new, creative, or interesting.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Tuesday February 24, @11:23PM
"Sort of like why virtually no one watches new TV and movies. None of it is new, creative, or interesting"
Too many ads. I don't care if they are the "hottest videos on social media". Advertisers can only pee in the beer so much before people lose their taste for it.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Tuesday February 24, @03:03PM (4 children)
.. You start as a gamer, then you either end up a programmer, or get bored.
Plus games get more expensive, but are essentially the same as the last one. (Unlike debugging).
I have heard that some people like to play real sport or go to the gym. Wrestling with Cobol does not keep you fit - I speak from experience here.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday February 24, @04:52PM
> Wrestling with Cobol does not keep you fit
It keeps me fit in the Mind Gym.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 24, @06:39PM (2 children)
Wrestling with COBOL actually does burn calories - if you're really wrestling and not just screwing around for 7 hours billed to a 7 minute change you made.
https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmasters-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-lose-weight-playing-chess [espn.com]
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Wednesday February 25, @07:15PM (1 child)
Porting from MicroFocus Cobol to IBM was definitely wrestling last time I tried!
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 25, @07:33PM
I don't doubt it, but I wonder how different it would be with "modern tools" (like Claude Opus 4.6 and friends.)
I did a 4000 LOC code review a few days ago and "modern tool helpers" identified 3 major issues (2 of which would have been hard to spot the old way), plus 5 or 6 little nitpicks that are mostly easy to spot but nonetheless good to fix when you see them, in less than an hour of effort for me. To review to that level of detail and insight would have taken me days without the tool - possibly longer than it took the code monkey to write it in the first place.
Now, they had a merge conflict, so I have another 2000 LOC to review to see if there are any screwups in there. A "modern tool" just finished its review while I typed this - maybe 5 minutes.
And, it found one issue: the StopAsync -> Dispose lifecycle path does not dispose the orchestrator or its owned resources (memory leak... important memory leak? Maybe... Worth fixing? Probably...)
To review to the level of detail required to catch that? Probably several hours, if I caught it at all.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Tuesday February 24, @03:42PM (4 children)
As the recession gets worse people will continue to cut spending that has no return. Illegal ways to get money will surge, that being gambling and prostitution. So it fits. I'm not sure of the roblox angle, it seems to be a children's phone game. Roblox might just simply be a way for children to socialize without parental monitoring. I have no idea if someone can make money playing roblox.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by DadaDoofy on Tuesday February 24, @04:03PM (3 children)
Recession? You must not be in the US.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday February 24, @07:02PM (2 children)
If one goes by the classical indicators, the US has been in and out of a depression since Little Bush. Greenspan called it as he bailed, saying that the risk of deflation was then over. Yes, the risk was over. That was soley because the deflation had arrived. Yes there is occasionally inflation in the US, depending on what you choose to measure, but those are the moments that the US is merely in a recession as opposed to a full out depression.
Games cost a lot to develop, and with the ongoing policy of economic divestment which most large companies have the large companies are not going to make new games if they can avoid it. Furthermore, the large ones buy up small competitors to put them out of business and/or for debt loading.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DadaDoofy on Tuesday February 24, @07:26PM (1 child)
The "classical indicators" define a recession as two quarters of negative GDP growth, which last occurred in 2020 and, the one before that, almost two decades ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
Since you seem to be confused about the current state of the US economy, I suggest you tune in to the State Of The Union Address tonight to get caught up.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25, @03:44AM
I liked it. The very small handful of non-Epstein, non-Kremlin senior cabinet members grabbed him before he could mumble any word salad, or even shart, and carted him off to hospice invoking the 25th amendment. The problem could have been solved via Section 3 of the 14th amendment long ago, but at least there is finally positive movement.
Oh. Wait...
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday February 24, @11:03PM (1 child)
I just don't get it with gambling.
I grew up in Las Vegas until age 14 in the 1960s and 70s. Then we moved to a midwest state.
Everyone who lived in Vegas knew better than to gamble. At least back then.
Fact: the games are designed so that the house has a guaranteed edge or profit margin. The longer you play, the more you lose -- in the long run.
Now in 2010, my company had our annual Christmas party in Vegas (about 5000 people back then). I took my best friend along as my guest. I hadn't been back there in decades. For the first time in my life, I decided to just try gambling on a slot machine. Only $5. Just like if I were playing a video arcade game. Just for fun. So I played. I got up as high as just over $8. I knew this is where I should cash out. But I was determined to keep on playing until my $5 turned into zero, and then walked away. It was $5 worth of fun. The only time I've ever gambled in Vegas or anywhere. I felt a bit entitled to try it, and it was no more morally wrong than deciding in advance to spend $5 on playing arcade game machines.
When I was a kid, I had seen everything. People came there and then spent every dime they could beg, borrow or steal. Sometimes they couldn't get back home. The church I went to saw every possible sob story.
Do you see all those billion dollar properties in Vegas? Guess what! Those weren't built from people who came to Vegas and got rich and went home.
What happens in Vegas stays in YouTube.
So that only leaves Porn.
And Crypto, which is like an unregistered security, which makes it immoral.
Stupid people exist because nothing in the food chain eats them anymore.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday February 27, @08:49PM
So I played. I got up as high as just over $8. I knew this is where I should cash out.
The trick is to cash out then nurse a beer for a while and watch what happens to the next sucker who has a go. And the next one. And the next one. Then you can see the pattern. When you have figured it out, wait until one loses all his money and gives up and then go in yourself and get the profit.
Don't try this at home. I haven't the patience so I've never actually succeeded.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25, @02:16PM
In contrast more of the 15-30 year olds today are playing stuff like pickleball or doom-scrolling or hitting the gyms or playing some phone games. They're drinking less booze and soda, smoking less, eating more "fitness meal preps" and less junk food. I'm not convinced that the gambling, porn and crypto is higher in this bunch than the previous (based on the network traffic etc logs). But this is just based on the sample I've seen which could be vastly different from the ones you and the study see.
Anyway if more of the bunch I'm talking about keep this arguably healthier lifestyle up but don't live past 80 it'll be an injustice... 🤣
(Score: 2) by jman on Wednesday February 25, @05:50PM
These days I mostly play with words, close friends, and computers.