There's a lot of siloed misinformation here.

• it's not because of a slowdown in the industry
• It's not because of poor game releases/sales.
• It's not because companies grew too much/quickly.

FURTHERMORE...

• It's not just gaming.
• It's not just IT as a whole.
• It's everywhere.

This has nothing to do with performance or the economy, and everything to do with late stage capitalism. Companies have a round of layoffs just to bump up their year end statements. Worse yet, they then proceed to hire people back for less money.

It's money-grubbing evil, no more and no less.

On top of that, do games become worse or am I getting old? Is it a combination of both? Is it nostalgia? Do I hate change? 🤔

Too many mediocre or outright terrible games being released. On average graphics have gotten much better but gameplay has gotten worse with busy HUDs and lootboxes and live service.

My take is that there was too much competition for a limited resource - our attention span, that studios collectively spent billions trying to capitalize on but failing.

There were the smash hit successes this past year, Lethal Company, Palworld, Helldivers 2, Armour 6, Baldur's Gate 3 to name some.

The space of games that failed were trying to be like Fortnite: get a generation of kids' whole lives hooked so that Epic would be flush with "recurring revenue" enough to put random IPs into the game.

Big budgets promising a big payoff because of live-service participation didn't ultimately payout enough to survive the high-interest rate environment.

Isn't this happening to all tech?

I think it's better to look at it as 'it'll never be this good again' instead. Might dull the pain a bit and help brace for the future!

Ok this might be the best article on the topic I've read (specific to the games industry). Much better journalism than I'd expect, especially from IGN, so credit where credit is due. Thanks for sharing.